Ordinary
by dameserdaigle
Summary: Roderich, after a series of unfortunate circumstances, is hoping that high school will allow him to be normal. Gilbert, his new neighbor and classmate, has different plans - plans that make the next four years anything but the ordinary experience Roderich had his heart set on.
1. Chapter 1

Gilbert skateboarded into Roderich's life the summer before high school without a helmet on. From the moment he met him, Roderich knew two things, thanks to the lack of safety precautions:  
1\. He was stupidly reckless  
2\. He was stupidly hot  
What he didn't know was how much of a thorn in his side Gilbert would become – impossible to get rid of, impossible to ignore.

It was his first summer in town, his father having decided to sell their house and move on a whim because the walls reminded him too much of Roderich's mother. The unspoken knowledge between the two of them was that Roderich himself also reminded his father too much of his mother; he had gotten her vibrant violet eyes and dark hair as opposed to his father's blond-and-blue-eyed recessive-ness. He had also gotten her slim figure and long fingers, her talent for music, her lilting voice, her astigmatism.

They didn't need to say that it was painful for his father to look at him and that was why he kept taking clients farther and farther away, to the point where he was hardly home and his fourteen-year-old son was left to the quiet of an unlived-in house, the coldness of its tile floors in the morning, its echoing rooms making everything he played sound melancholy.

The town, the house, and the sudden disappearance of his mother were not the only new things. It would also be Roderich's first time attending public school. His father swore the reason was because he could not bear to have Roderich go to a boarding school, which would only have made sense of he was ever home.

Roderich thought, on the day when he saw Gilbert on that stupid skateboard while he was down the driveway collecting the mail, that his father might have guessed other reasons to keep him away from the all-boy boarding schools the men of his family traditionally went to.

Gilbert skidded to a halt in front of him, flipping the board up into one hand, and looked between Roderich and the house behind him with a wide-mouthed grin. "They said this place had sold. Didn't say there was a kid, though."

He stuck out his hand, grubby under the nails. "I'm Gilbert. Live down the hill. Since you've got no one else living up here, guess that makes us neighbors."

Roderich didn't take the hand to shake, more out of thoughtlessness and the fact that his arms were full of mail than intentional rudeness. "You should be wearing a helmet," he said, too focused on the danger of skateboarding around a hill sans helmet to register the introduction.

It was also unfortunate that Gilbert didn't have helmet hair to throw off his casually good-looking not-at-all-gawky face.

"That's a strange name," Gilbert said, shrugging and putting his hand down as if he wasn't at all bothered by the slight. "Pretty long, too. Must get exhausting for your parents to always be yelling it."

"What?" Roderich blinked rapidly, his lips curved down, as he processed the absurd statement. "That's ridiculous. My name is Roderich."

"As if that's any better." Gilbert rolled his eyes, leaning forward against Roderich's mailbox. He had an easy confidence about him, a sharp earnestness in his eyes, and an everlasting smirk about his mouth. Roderich had the jolting, uncomfortable realization that he was jealous of this ease – despite how talented he knew he was, he never had that pure confidence. "So, Roddy. You going to school around here?"

"Yes. Heritage High School." Roderich looked down at the mail he was carrying to distract himself. Advertisements, mostly. None of it for him, of course. No one sent someone his age mail.

He just kept hoping for something from his mother. Not that she would know where to find him.

Gilbert's eyes lit up, something that seemed impossible, as they had been quite bright already. "Awesome! You'll be seeing lots of me, then!" He grinned and Roderich, peeking out from over his Burger King coupons, realized that he had dimples. Damnit.

"Is it that small of a school?" Roderich was used to small schools, but had been hoping that this new one would be bigger. It was easier to blend in when there were lots of people. He was tired of sticking out. Just for a little bit, he thought it would be nice to be normal.

Laughing, Gilbert shook his head, dropping his skateboard back onto the ground and setting one foot on it. "No. I've just got a feeling."

He pushed off with the foot still on the ground, moving a little further away from Roderich, and gave a jaunty wave. "See you around, little rich boy."

Then he was gone, down the hill, moving far too fast to have a hope of controlling his descent. Roderich watched him go, frowning and chewing his lower lip. He, too, had a feeling.

This was how trouble started.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the first day of school and Roderich's phone clock told him that it was two minutes before the bell. This new school didn't have lockers, so he grudgingly carried around his backpack – the leather bookbag type with a cross-body strap, form over function – as he searched for his first class, geometry, in the crowded halls. He was shocked at how unconcerned the various mobs seemed at the approaching start of the school day, milling about and chattering instead of doing as he was: searching for the right number by the right door while holding a map of the school tightly in both hands. He was at least relatively sure that he had located the correct building, but the maze of hallways had turned out to be more challenging than expected.

The searching would have been easier had he been just a couple inches taller, he thought bitterly while trying to see around the head of a boy he assumed was a football player – no one else had the need to be made of quite so much muscle.

The first bell rang before he found the right room and Roderich had to fight down the surge of irrational panic that seemed intent on choking him. It built up in his throat and he swallowed several times to try and clear it, succeeding primarily in making his mouth dry. As he watched, the crowds before him dissipated, the other students rushing off with purposeful strides until the hallway was nearly empty.

Empty, except for two people outside the closest bathroom. One was a tall girl whose light brown hair fell in messy waves down to her waist, who was rifling through the backpack she was balancing on her hip. The other was Gilbert, who appeared to not have brushed his hair that morning.

Caught between his need to find his class and his pride, Roderich hesitated, tempted to ask them if they knew where the classroom was. Instead, he began to back away, hoping that he wouldn't be noticed. He didn't want Gilbert's belief that they would be seeing a lot of each other to be proven right so soon.

"Are you sure you have it, Lizzie?" Gilbert's voice echoed in the hallway, impatient and without its cocky confidence of a few days prior. Roderich recognized the edge in it as something he was overly familiar with – nerves.

"Shush. Yes, I'm sure. If you're not going to be grateful, I won't agree to bring stuff for you anymore," the girl, Lizzie, said. "Just because your printer broke, doesn't mean I have to be your rescuer." She pulled out a piece of paper from between several folders, triumphantly holding it out to Gilbert. "There. One class schedule. How do you manage to lose everything?"

"I'm not paying you to ask questions," Gilbert muttered, holding out a crumpled candy bar. "But thanks." He snatched the paper, looking it over quickly, then groaned. "I had been hoping that math first was just a nightmare."

Roderich was just about to turn the corner when he paused, stopped by the knowledge that Gilbert also had a math class first – perhaps the same one – and therefore might at least know the general direction to go toward. Just as he was about to give in to his stubbornness and keep going, though, he heard his name called out.

"Hey, Roderich! Trying to avoid me?"

He turned his head to see Gilbert walking over to him, grinning and waving goodbye to his friend who, Roderich supposed, did not also have math first. "No. Trying to find my class."

"Are you lost? I didn't see you at orientation, so makes sense you don't know how to get around." Gilbert rolled his eyes and leaned over Roderich's shoulder to see his schedule, which he perused for a moment, making quiet "hm" sounds as he read. Finally, he gave a firm nod, rocking back onto the heels of his feet. "Lucky for you, we're going to the same place!"

"Oh, well, do you know how to get there?" Roderich asked, lowering his schedule and map, and feeling foolish for having ever had them out. He wasn't sure if he was meant to feel relieved or annoyed – as it was, he mostly felt his stomach churning, the anxiety from the first day of school rearing its head.

"Course I do, I went to orientation." Gilbert headed down the hallway that Roderich had been about to turn down anyway – for him, a small moment of triumph.

"I didn't have a way to get there." Roderich adjusted his shoulder strap, glancing at the numbers as they passed them. They did appear to be going in the right direction, which was a relief. The vibes he got from Gilbert were ones that made him assume that he'd have no trouble just walking right off the campus and ditching the whole day. "I would have come if I'd had the option."

"Parent couldn't take you?" Gilbert looked down at him, a good couple inches taller, and raised his eyebrows.

"Dad's never home."

"Oh. Sorry." The was a pause, then Gilbert continued cheerfully, as if he hadn't just had to apologize. "Well, least I was around to help." Gilbert glanced up as they reached the right room and ducked into the quickly-filling classroom. Just as Roderich followed, the late bell rang, and the two exchanged victorious smiles. Surprised at himself, Roderich quickly let his drop, watching as Gilbert hurried over to an open desk by some boys that he began animatedly talking to.

Sighing, Roderich sat down himself, letting his bag fall next to his feet and looking toward the front of the classroom. If this was what it felt like to be normal, he wasn't sure he wanted it. Right now he just felt like an outsider.


	3. Chapter 3

Roderich's first period of orchestra – which was the next day, thanks to the horridly confusing block schedule – cemented the knowledge that this school was nothing like his previous one. His old orchestra was comprised of over sixty students from the three middle school grades. He walked into a room of twenty plus a smiling, elderly conductor who shook his hand warmly.

"Two freshmen this year!" she cooed, eyes bright as though the announcement was something to celebrate. "Welcome! We'll be part testing right away, so get set up!"

Roderich noticed her eyeing his case and thought that he caught a hint of disappointment in her eyes. Surveying the room, he guessed she might be sad that it was yet another violin – as per usual, that was the disproportionate favorite – instead of a bass to add to the current section-of-one or at least a cello to join the two upperclassmen girls busy chatting as they rosined their bows.

At least, he thought as he opened his case and started to tighten the bow hair, the violin to viola ratio wasn't too skewed. There were nine violins and six violas. He would bring his section up to ten. As a whole, he decided, the orchestra, however tiny, should at least have a balanced sound.

"That's a beautiful violin," said a voice above him, and he looked up from putting on his shoulder rest to see the girl that Gilbert had been talking to the day before. Lizzie. She was balancing a viola on her hip – a familiar posture, as she had done the same with her bag when he'd seen her – and smiling. Her hair was tied back this time, Roderich noted with appreciation. Easier to play without it in the way.

"Thank you," he said, focusing his attention back on the instrument. It was a deep, rich color, carved with simple lines, and well-cared for, not a scratch on it. "It was my mother's." Surprisingly, the words didn't hurt. Instead, he remembered waking up on that morning nearly a year ago with his mother gone and the violin case left for him on the desk with a sort of detachment. As if it had happened to someone else.

He still had the note she had left with it, propped up on his dresser. Her curling, careful handwriting left him with just one admonition: "Play it well."

"Well, she had good taste," Lizzie said, sitting down next to Roderich. He thought he might have caught some concern in her voice – a common occurrence, when he referred to his mother in the past tense – but he also might have just imagined it. "You're Roderich, right? Gil said he met you up the hill."

"And you're Lizzie. You printed out his schedule." Roderich didn't like the idea of someone knowing more about him than he did about them. While this girl seemed nice, he had learned over the years that kindness was not always free.

"So everyone calls me. Name's Elizabeta, though." She spread her legs out in front of her, looking around the room. "Everyone else in here has been playing together forever. I don't know any of them. They all went to the other middle schools. Mine had more of a band focus." She glanced over at Roderich. Her eyes were shockingly green, deeper than he had ever seen. "So I thought maybe we could stick together, seeing as you're new too."

"That depends. Are you any good?"

It had been a joke and – thankfully – Lizzie laughed. "My teacher says I am. But I guess we'll see."

Just then, the conductor pressed the A on the piano, and Lizzie quickly vanished from the seat as tuning began. The chatter died down and Roderich was relieved to see how focused the room became. Perhaps this orchestra was not so different after all.

Unfortunately, part testing proved that to be a naïve hope. He watched the older violinists struggle to maintain bow control, wrestle with vibrato, and fail to sight read simple passages. The conductor was endlessly patient and gave out plenty of unwarranted praise, but he could see the tension it left on her face. It was an age-old high school orchestra tension: the knowledge that all of the meager music budget would continue to go to band while the strings program died out little by little, year after year.

The violinist who had done the best so far – a tall senior with brooding eyebrows – was sitting smugly in the first chair. Roderich could occasionally feel his eyes on him and knew he was being sized up. He was the only one who could not be judged, the only wild card. But when Roderich looked up, the boy had moved on from watching him and was talking idly with a sophomore girl who had done abhorrently. He supposed the self-appointed first chair had found the scrawny freshman not a threat.

Unacceptable.

When it was his turn, he stepped up in front of the conductor and began her exercises. Easy enough: two-octave scales, both major and minor, then chromatic. Then sight reading passages, some with vibrato, some without. Roderich noticed that she gave him more than she had given others, her face blank and impossible to read. Each new one was harder than the one before.

Each one was child's play.

Eventually, she stopped and gave Roderich a smile, somehow broader than any he had seen on her face previously. "Well done. You play like you were born to."

Roderich didn't look at her. He couldn't. Instead, he looked past her, towards the senior with the thick brows whose face was red with the impossible knowledge that he had just been bumped to second chair.

"I was," he said.

Lizzie became a fast friend, but Roderich did not see Gilbert as much as he had been told to expect. The two had been best friends since childhood, he was told, but they tended to hang around different groups as school. Roderich didn't mind this, as Gilbert's friends seemed to be the rowdy type. He was pretty sure that they had started the first-Friday-of-school food fight, though no one had ever been caught for it.

He had assumed that food fights only happened on TV until then.

Navigating high school did not seem to be as difficult as Roderich had assumed it would be. Lizzie was probably what made it easy – she was magnetic and everyone loved her. Everyone did not, it turned out, love Roderich, but he was used to such treatment. Having raw talent and a brain to match tended to frustrate those without.

No one seemed quite as frustrated by Roderich's arrival at the school as the new second chair violinist, Charlie. Roderich stared a stand with him, but very few words. Most their conversations went the same way.

"Charlie, would you mind turning the page this time?"

"No."

Roderich didn't understand the hostility. If he had wanted to be first chair, he should have practiced harder. Or, if Charlie's intonation was any indication of the reality, practiced at all.

It was when Roderich was walking to the bus – the bus! he never would have taken one in the years prior – near the end of the first month of school that he found out just how high Charlie's frustration really went. Rounding the corner of the building, he almost ran into him, leaning against the corner, looking down at his phone.

"You know, you're only better than everyone else because you went to that fancy private school," said Charlie in his slow, low voice, not looking up. "Brinton. The really stuck-up one a few towns over."

Roderich moved to go around Charlie, frowning. "I didn't learn at school. I've been playing since before I can remember."

"Maybe, maybe not. But you went there. Ruby, sophomore in my algebra II class went there too." Charlie glanced up from his phone, thick eyebrows raised, as he shifted his weight to the side to stop Roderich from going around. "Seems you were quite the little celebrity there."

"Not really." Roderich tightened his bag's shoulder strap, frowning up at Charlie. He was frustratingly tall, but all-limb.

"Oh, don't be modest. Ruby said everyone knew you." Charlie leaned forward, jabbing a finger into Roderich's chest. "Everyone knew you were a fag."

Roderich let out a slow breath, looking down at Charlie's finger. "Don't touch me, Charles."

Charlie laughed – more of a raspy chuckle that confirmed Roderich's belief that he smoked. "Why not? That turn you on?" And then he slapped Roderich across the face, causing his glasses to go flying. He was, unfortunately, stronger than he looked.

Raising a hand to his stinging face, Roderich took a couple steps backward, looking out blearily to try and see where his glasses went. Before he could find them, Charlie pulled his backpack off and opened it, starting to throw his binders and notebooks everywhere.

Roderich, having located his glasses, put them on and watched math homework fly away, his library book lose a few pages, his pencils get scattered in the grass.

Charlie threw the bag back at Roderich. It landed at his feet, empty and wrinkled. "That's your first lesson on what we think about guys like you here. When other people find out, they won't go so easy."

He walked off and Roderich watched him go, his head throbbing. It took him a few long minutes to collect himself enough to begin to retrieve his things – movement before might have caused him to lose it completely; instead, he was able to stand, emotionless, before methodically searching out what hadn't been lost to the wind. He knew that, at this point, he had missed the bus, and took the time to steel himself for the long walk home.

The quad was silent and empty, but as Roderich collected the last pencil he could find, he looked toward the closest doorway, feeling as though he was being watched. And there, standing near a pillar, was Gilbert, watching silently, not moving to help.


	4. Chapter 4

Roderich's father was not home for his birthday. It was a Saturday, and he had stayed up the night before, watching the minutes tick to midnight, hoping that he would show up, miraculously, when the day changed.

When he didn't, Roderich sat up another hour, staring out the window.

In the morning, there was a cake in the kitchen. It had been dropped off by the maid, but baked in some bakery downtown. There was a note on it, not in his father's handwriting, instead typed and impersonal:

Sorry, Roderich, very pressing issues on the Stevenson case. Please enjoy the cake; it's your favorite.

Roderich didn't know what he was supposed to do with a cake that could easily feed twelve people. He ate a slice for breakfast, then went outside for the mail he hadn't gotten yesterday.

There was a card from his grandparents, back in Austria, and one from his aunt. He stared at that one, his face hot. If his mother's sister knew his new address, then his mother did too.

Why didn't she send at least a card? Why didn't she come?

The sound of wheels scraping on the pavement alerted him to Gilbert. He didn't look up from the cards; he didn't want the other boy to see the wetness in his eyes. He'd been avoiding him anyway, since the problem with Charlie. Charlie, for his part, hadn't been an issue the past couple months, but word had gotten out and school felt like a battleground.

It wasn't too hard to avoid Gilbert, as he did seem to skip school a lot. Maybe it was just math, though.

Maybe he was avoiding Roderich.

"Hey, Roddy!"

What right did he have, acting like they were friends? Last Roderich had checked, friends helped each other. Even Lizzie, though, hadn't been particularly helpful – "I'm sorry Roderich, but people around here… That's not really surprising" – but at least she had stuck around.

"What, you ignoring me?" Gilbert's voice had a teasing lilt to it, but there was a certain amount of hesitation too. Like he couldn't imagine someone ignoring him – or, maybe, could imagine it too well.

"No." Roderich turned his head just enough to see Gilbert. He still wasn't wearing a goddamn helmet. He was smiling a little, and his eyes were bright. He was like a puppy, always so excited, and Roderich couldn't imagine being so earnest.

He didn't look like the sort of person who would stand there and let someone's things get destroyed.

"Well, good! That would be lame." Gilbert took a step forward, then paused and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "You're up early."

"Couldn't sleep." Roderich blinked away the last of the tears – he had successfully kept them from spilling over – and turned around fully. "What do you want? No one else lives up here, so you must be here to see me."

"Hey, this has been my route forever! Not my fault you seem obsessed with getting the mail…" Gilbert shrugged, looking down at his feet. "I can go, if you want."

Roderich stared at Gilbert for a long moment, willing himself to tell him to shove off down the hill and never come back so he could get to his day of violin and piano practice and eating several more slices of cake. Why should Gilbert think he could show up on his property whenever he wanted, despite having proven himself to be a complete ass?

Instead, he found himself saying: "No, come in. I can't eat all the cake myself."

Gilbert perked up and closed the distance between the two boys quickly. "Cake? Should've said something sooner! Why's there cake?"

"It's my birthday."

"Ah, shit, really? You shoulda told me! I didn't bring anything!" Gilbert paused, looking at Roderich through narrowed eyes. "Am I gonna be crashing some party?"

"No. I didn't tell anyone." Roderich shrugged, heading inside and throwing his birthday cards in the basket by the door. "I don't tend to have parties."

"Why not? If I lived in as big a place as this, I would!" Gilbert was looking around with wide eyes. He slowly put his skateboard down by the door, propped up. "What kind of cake is it?"

"Chocolate marble." Roderich went into the kitchen, cutting two more pieces. "It was always my mom's favorite."

"Like mother like son?"

"You have no idea."

Gilbert sat down on one of the stools at the island. "Lizzie told me your mom isn't around anymore. I'm sorry. Mine isn't either."

"She's around somewhere," Roderich muttered, sliding a slice of cake to Gilbert. "It's just… Not here."

"Your old man home?"

"No."

"Oh."

They sat in silence for a moment, both focusing on their slices. Gilbert seemed to engulf his and, without asking, he cut himself another. Roderich thought for a moment about how rude that was, then reminded himself that he didn't know what else would happen with it.

"How old are you today?"

"Fifteen." It felt weird to say it.

"Old for a freshman."

"November birthday. Plus, I was a really sick child. Not ready for kindergarten that early."

"It's cool. Mine's in January. I'm not too young myself."

"How do you make everyone love you?"

"Huh?"

"At school. Everyone loves you."

"No they don't. I just talk to people easy."

"I don't know how to do that."

"No. That's cause you're different."

"What?"

"You're different. You walk different, talk different, act different… I think people are a little bit jealous, really. Most of them are gonna be stuck here their whole lives. Everyone knows you won't."

"I don't want to be different."

Gilbert laughed, scooping the last bit of his cake onto his fork. "Not something you choose."

Roderich was silent for a beat, then he looked at Gilbert out of the corners of his eyes. "Why didn't you help me?" He knew he didn't need to explain what he meant.

It took a long moment for Gilbert to respond, and when he did, it started with a sigh. "Roderich, we're at the bottom of the food chain. If you look like me," he gestured to his white hair, his impossibly red eyes, "you've gotta keep your head down."

"No one was around to see."

"Someone's always around."

"It's not a crime to help someone pick up their books."

"No."

"Then why not?"

Gilbert groaned, rubbing his temples. "Drop it."

"No! Why should I? You just stood there and watched!"

"I didn't think I had a choice not to."

"Of course you did! Why wouldn't you?"

"Because if I had helped they would have thought I was like you!"

The silence that followed was so complete, it was oppressive. Roderich stared at Gilbert with his mouth half-open. Gilbert wouldn't look at Roderich, but every line of his face screamed guilt.

"I didn't mean that."

"Get out of my house."

"I'm not against—"

"Out."

"Roderich, I just meant—"

"Get out!"

Gilbert slowly stood up, still not looking at Roderich. He headed for the door and grabbed his skateboard. With his hand on the knob, he looked over his shoulder. Roderich thought that sadness on Gilbert looked worse than on any other person, because it was so unnatural on a face so prone to smiling.

That didn't make his own hurt any less.

"I'm sorry. Happy birthday."

The door closed a little too hard. Roderich, not knowing what else to do, ate another slice of cake.


	5. Chapter 5

Roderich and Gilbert fell into an uneasy, unspoken arrangement. They had nothing to do with each other at school. Gilbert started showing up for math more often – confirming Roderich's earlier suspicions – but they never looked at each other. If Gilbert came over to talk to Lizzie at lunch, Roderich suddenly needed to use the restroom. If they both needed to ride the bus, they found seats as far apart as possible.

The difficult part was when seating was changed in geometry and both ended up right next to each other. When the teacher asked them to work with their "shoulder partners," it caused a quiet, awkward standoff. They silently worked through proofs and checked answers by swapping papers.

Lizzie yelled at both of them individually. While they hadn't hung out before it all, at least they had been okay with breathing the same air and she didn't understand what had caused the new arrangement.

What Lizzie, Lizzie busy with helping her mother's housecleaning business, tackle-things-head-on Lizzie, Lizzie who trusted that what people said is what they meant, what she didn't know was that Gilbert came up to Roderich's house about twice a week.

Both boys had realized that there was a certain loneliness they shared. Roderich hadn't seen his father since September and lived with the help of the maid taking pity on him and takeout. Gilbert's father had a clear favorite in the form of a blond-haired, blue-eyed seventh grader who, despite having less puberty under his belt, could put on muscle faster than anyone – certainly faster than lanky Gilbert whose muscles made him wiry, not bulky. Both boys felt acutely unwanted. There was a certain comfort in being unwanted together.

They didn't do much. Played video games – which Roderich was notoriously bad at but his father still insisted on getting him – over Thai delivery. Ate too many cookies while watching TV – both had a soft spot for competition shows, especially vocal and food-based ones. Played Scrabble as it rained outside, both agreeing to allow German words, which created a hilarious bilingual smorgasbord. More often than not, they just sat in silence, scrolling through social media, occasionally commenting to the other about something they saw.

Roderich was glad that the presence of another person made the house seem less big, less intimidating.

He wasn't sure why Gilbert kept coming, seeing as his name was mud everywhere else.

They didn't really talk. And certain things were completely off-limits. They didn't talk about Roderich's birthday. They didn't talk about Charlie. They didn't talk about school in general. Even near the end of December, Roderich didn't think he knew Gilbert any better than he had in August.

Well, he knew a little. He knew that Gilbert couldn't handle spicy food but liked to tough it out and pretend he could. He knew that his favorite pizza was pepperoni. He knew that he wore a lot of red – "Brings out my eyes" – but his favorite color was blue. He knew that he couldn't sing worth a damn, but he sure loved to try. He knew that he loved his brother more than anything in the world but was afraid that Ludwig was ashamed of him. He knew his mother was hit by a drunk driver, and so Gilbert was scared of alcohol, but also wanted to try it with a craving that was impossible to ignore forever. He knew he hated the smell of smoke, but that he couldn't cook, so he was used to smelling it.

He knew his eyes crinkled when he smiled and that he laughed from his throat. He knew he hated being surprised but loved surprising people. He knew that they shared a sweet tooth, but that Gilbert also loved sour candy with a cult-like obsession. He knew that he had a razor-sharp wit and a brilliant brain, but he didn't like to show it to people because he wasn't supposed to be smart.

He knew he wished he could do things he wasn't supposed to, and that was why he skateboarded without a helmet.

So, maybe he did know some things, but it wasn't as if they were things that could hold up a conversation. Gilbert was an enigma; he would spout something, then clam up and go back to safe territory. It was like he wanted to share, but was scared to at the same time.

Roderich didn't have that problem. He just didn't share.

"Do you know where your mom is?"

"No."

"Why'd she leave?"

"Don't know."

That was a lie. His mother had been threatening to leave for as long as he could remember. His father wasn't exactly approachable. He was obsessed with his work and Roderich's mother was a creative. It was stifling.

Roderich just didn't understand why she didn't take him with her.

They were eating chow mein and general's chicken when Gilbert broke the avoidance rule: "So I think I'm gonna see you Saturday."

"Why?" Roderich was leaning against the couch instead of sitting on it, his legs tucked up against himself. He ate out of the takeout container to leave less dishes for the maid – a practice he would have never partaken in before. He watched as Gilbert flipped through the DVR, trying to find something that they hadn't already seen. A Herculean task.

"Concert. Lizzie's in the orchestra with you, yeah? She'd kill me if I didn't come."

"Oh." Roderich looked down at his food. The orchestra concert was a joke. The school theater, which they would be playing in, was tiny, barely holding a hundred-person audience. The acoustics weren't any good either. Roderich predicted the whole thing to be a complete disaster. It was the first time he wasn't looking forward to a concert in the slightest.

"She said you had a solo?"

Roderich snorted. "Of a sort. The conductor is trying to show off that she has one person who knows what they're doing. She's using the excuse that it's not uncommon for the first chair in a section to play something solo. Really, I just think she wants the rest of the orchestra to play less. It's obvious that most of them don't practice."

"Still a solo."

"It's putting a target on my back. Again."

"Right." Gilbert gave up on the DVR and turned off the television, allowing his food to have his full attention. "Is your dad gonna be there?"

"Doubt it. He'll probably send something to make up for it." They never did make up for him not being there, his father's gifts. Even if he did understand what Roderich liked, he was never around to tell him that he had done well and that he was proud of him. That had been his mother's job.

He had a brief moment of hope that she might show up. But he squashed it, quickly. She was probably enjoying not having to be a mother.

"She talks a lot about you. Lizzie."

"Does she?" Roderich turned his head, raising his eyebrows. "She barely mentions you at all."

"Probably because she thinks you want to kill me."

"I haven't decided that I don't."

"Shut up. Anyway, you should probably shut her down before she gets serious."

"She knows I'm gay."

"Doesn't seem to matter."

They ate in silence for a moment. Roderich decided not to talk about the Lizzie problem anymore.

"You better not fall asleep during the concert."

"Hey! I have as much respect for classical music as the next guy."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

* * *

The way the concert went, it might as well have been called "Roderich and the Orchestra." The conductor had looked into Roderich's family background and told the whole audience, multiple times, that Roderich was the son of Johanna Edelstein. It made him almost glad that his father wasn't there to hear his wife's name thrown about like a publicity stunt every time Roderich was mentioned, which was far more times than necessary.

The audience seemed to eat it up, though. Roderich found it disgusting. He doubted that any of them really knew anything about his mother.

He did, however, like that they looked at him as though he was the celebrity Charlie had accused him of being.

Every time he looked out into the audience, he searched it. He knew his father wasn't there – he had sent his apology gift preemptively: an Amazon gift card, he was getting lazy – but he still hadn't given up hope for his mother.

It turned out, as he had expected, to be a fool's hope.

After the concert, though, Lizzie was happier than Roderich had ever seen her. It was her first time playing in a concert with a full orchestra. Her energy was infectious as she pulled Roderich out to the lobby, brimming with triumph.

Roderich willed himself to catch it from her, but he couldn't seem to manage it. There was nothing like a post-concert high for someone who wasn't used to it.

"Gil!" she shouted, her hand a vice-grip on Roderich's sleeve as she marched through the lobby. It was almost as though she was afraid he would run off. As if he had anywhere to go. "Did you love it?"

"Course I did." Gilbert was sitting at a tucked-away bench. He didn't look at Roderich, but beamed at Lizzie. "You were great."

"True." Lizzie plopped down next to Gilbert, tugging Roderich to sit next to her. He did, staring out in front of himself so as to maintain the carefully created distance between him and Gilbert. The air was almost static in its awkwardness. He was furious that Gilbert would look at Lizzie with so much pride, but that he didn't look at him that way. That no one was there to look at him that way. "I know you two hate each other, but I want a picture. And I want to remember that both of my best friends were here."

Gilbert and Roderich looked at each other over Lizzie's head. Gilbert raised his eyebrows. Roderich shrugged. Gilbert was an asshole, but that wasn't Lizzie's fault.

"Okay," Gilbert said.

Roderich said nothing.

"Great!" Lizzie pulled them closer and held up her phone. "Both of you, smile!"

And with just a couple taps of the screen, Gilbert's full-tooth grin and Roderich's careful, closed-lip smile ended up, together, on Elizabeta's Snapchat.


	6. Chapter 6

The effects of the concert were not immediate, as winter break started shortly after. It was an uneventful break that Roderich spent, as per usual, in Austria with his father's parents. They didn't really know what to do with children – let alone teenagers – which was obvious enough with how his father had turned out. That meant he was left to his own devices, except for the required family meals. Roderich didn't mind them. They spoke to him like an adult and they asked him questions about what he wanted, not what was wanted for him. They were encouraging, but firm.

It was a pity that his father had only gotten the "firm" part.

For much of the vacation, he got nonstop Snapchats from Lizzie with a few thrown in from Gilbert. They both celebrated Christmas; he had caught the tail-end of Hanukkah with his grandparents. They seemed to spend a lot of time together, which seemed weird, because, as far as he could tell, they didn't really hang out, instead continuing their friendship through mutual understanding of each other and shared history.

He rarely sent pictures back, but he did post a decent amount about his grandparents' cat. She had always liked him. The feeling was more than mutual.

His father showed up for one day. He talked to his parents a lot. He asked Roderich about his grades. He was on the next flight for a meeting in London.

"Is he always this busy?" his grandfather asked Roderich.

"No. He's usually busier."

He returned to the States a couple days before school started, back to an empty house. He slept much of the first day home, his body worn out from travel.

He woke up on the second day to hurried knocks on the front door, interspersed with the doorbell. Groaning and in his pajamas, he went and opened the door, blinking blearily up at Gilbert. He had left his glasses in his room, so Gilbert and the world around him were a blur.

"It's early."

"Not really."

"What do you want?"

"When did you get back?"

"Yesterday."

"Oh."

"It's cold out there."

"Yeah."

"Why are you here?"

"Gotta talk to you."

"We're talking."

"It's cold out here."

"Yes."

They stood there, staring at each other for a moment, then Roderich sighed and stepped out of the way. "Let me get my glasses," he muttered, heading off to his room without waiting for a response. When he came back, jacket on over his pajama shirt and glasses on his face, Gilbert was standing in the living room.

"Are you going to sit down?"

"Nah."

"Not staying long, then?"

"No."

"Suit yourself." Roderich sat down on the couch, tucking his legs underneath him. "What's the big issue?"

"They think we're dating."

"Who's they?"

"The school."

"Oh. We're not."

"No."

Gilbert wouldn't look at him. Roderich studied him for a long moment. Gilbert wasn't smiling. He wasn't even frowning. He was just staring at the floor.

"Why do they think that?"

"I don't really know how it started. Something about Lizzie's picture. Then people found out I've been coming over here and I really don't know how."

"But it makes you upset." Roderich felt sick to his stomach. His voice was cool, though. Relaxed.

"I told you. I keep my head down." Broken rule.

"I don't know how they got that from the picture."

"I don't either!"

"What does Lizzie think?"

"She's pissed that we didn't tell her we were hanging out."

"I would be too."

"Not helping!"

"What am I supposed to say?"

Gilbert looked deflated. His shoulders sagged. "I don't know. But even Lud is getting shit from his friends about his older brother being…"

"Gay?"

"I'm not!"

"You've made that quite clear."

"I shouldn't have expected you to care."

"No. You shouldn't have." Roderich stood up, staring coldly toward Gilbert. He still wouldn't look back at him. Coward. "Why should I care that you are having problems with rumors when this is my actual life? Why don't you care about that?"

"Roddy, I do care—"

"Don't call me that."

Gilbert glanced over at Roderich, looking hesitant. "I care that they're awful to you."

"Not good enough. You never do anything to help."

They stood there, silently. Eventually, Gilbert let out a sigh, straightening up. "I'll go."

"You should."

"I'll figure out a way to fix this on my own."

"No need. I'll make it go away."

"You will?"

"Won't be too hard. You already act like you hate me at school."

Gilbert, quick-witted Gilbert, didn't have a response to that. "I'll see you later?"

"Don't count on it."

When Gilbert left, Roderich thought it felt like the end of everything. He didn't think he could breathe. He wanted to cry, but he couldn't bring himself to.

Instead, he got to work.


	7. Chapter 7

The picture was the easiest to explain away. Roderich told the truth. Lizzie had taken the picture because it was her first concert and she wanted both boys in a picture with her. Lizzie and Gilbert had, of course, already told everyone that but, despite both of their relative popularity, they had been deemed too close to the matter to be trustworthy. The problem was that they had not known who, exactly, to tell. Instead, they had put the information on Lizzie's Instagram version of the picture and trusted that to do the trick. Laughable, really. Who looked at captions when it was so much easier just to scroll?

Roderich may not have known the social structure of the school as well, or have as much standing at it, but he did understand politics. It was his father's life work, after all, a lawyer to the high and mighty, including several important politicians and diplomats. So, he knew who to leak information to.

The Queen Bee was Felicyta. He knew better than to think he would ever get into her ear, but her best friend, Lara, wasn't quite as intimidating. In fact, she was one of the nicer people that Roderich had met – a popular girl who had gotten her status both from being Felicyta's friend since kindergarten and from her heart of gold. She was also in his English class, sitting right behind him.

"I don't know why they're making a big deal about the picture," he complained. As usual, she was hooked on every word. She had a talent for making the person she was talking to feel like what they had to say was radically important. That was probably why Felicyta liked her so much. "Lizzie dragged me out there and begged us to take it. She's a good friend and it made her happy. Neither of us wanted her to be upset."

Lara nodded, knowingly. "Lizzie is very nice. She used to help me with my spelling homework when we were little."

Roderich flashed Lara a wry, suffering smile. "And yes, Gilbert comes over sometimes. He lives at the bottom of the hill. He's closer to the store. He was skateboarding around so often that my maid sometimes paid him to pick up what we needed." He could tell from the hesitation in Lara's eyes that this story sounded less believable. Hastily, he added on, "she paid him in food, sometimes. He'd stay for a meal, then leave. We didn't talk ever. I've gotten the impression that he doesn't like me very much."

Lara sighed. "I've gotten that idea too." Roderich didn't understand why she seemed so disappointed by it.

Either way, he told Lara. Lara told Felicyta. Felicyta told everyone else. Such was the way at Heritage, at least for the freshman class. But Felicyta's older sister was a junior, so it got around well enough. It lingered a little while longer as people pointed out the flaws in the private shopper story, but eventually went away as more interesting rumors sans Gilbert or Roderich came up.

Roderich talked to Gilbert once during the first couple months back from break, when he knocked on the door one Friday afternoon.

"Thanks."

"I told you I'd fix it."

"Yeah. How did you?"

"Big gay secret."

That shut Gilbert up. He stared at Roderich with a mixture of frustration and – thankfully – guilt. "You're still upset?"

"Yes."

Gilbert pushed the hair out of his face and sighed. Right before the exhale, his cheeks puffed out. Thoughtless gestures, the both of them, but they made Roderich turn away, his stomach flip-flopping.

Gilbert was still stupidly hot. But mostly just stupid.

"I want us to be friends, Roddy."

"No. You want us to be friends on your terms because you like the perks but you don't even want to acknowledge me off this hill."

Gilbert averted his eyes. "When you put it like that…"

"How else am I supposed to put it?" Roderich's patience was wearing thin. "I'm not going to coddle you just because you want me to."

"I don't want you to."

"Then don't act like it isn't what happened."

Silence. It was drawn out longer than normal. Gilbert wouldn't look at him. Roderich stared directly at him, even though his cheeks were flushed red with anger.

"I want to fix this."

"You can't."

"We can be friends at school."

"I don't want to be anymore." That was a lie. But Roderich didn't care. He was just tired of hurting. He wanted someone else to hurt for once.

When Gilbert looked up, he knew it was a direct hit.

* * *

Lizzie was upset with him. For weeks, she varied between standoffish and furious, but always with the same theme: "Gilbert really feels bad. You should give him a chance. Then we could all act normal here!"

Roderich, for his part, never wavered in his response: "I'm not forgiving him."

There was a certain amount of pettiness there. He didn't care. Gilbert had made his position clear, and why should he have to change it? Roderich contented himself with the knowledge that he was doing him a favor. And, despite Lizzie's angry hissings at the lunch table, Gilbert didn't seem any worse for wear.

He was, actually, an infuriating little shit altogether too wrapped up in the cool crowd of boys-who-were-not-jocks-but-still-had-status. Roderich had no doubt that Gilbert could be a jock if he so wished, but that it didn't fit into his aesthetic.

Maybe it was that athletics were Ludwig's territory and Gilbert, despite being older, didn't want to encroach.

He didn't have as much money as most of the cool boys. What he lacked in funds, though, he made up in sarcasm. He had become quite the class clown, the prankster, the joker. He was, when it came down to it, a wild card in the freshman class, and he had thrown his lot in with the worst of them.

For, whatever Lizzie said, Roderich could hear him with his cronies in geometry.

"No more three-day-weekends until spring break."

"What, really?" That was Gilbert.

"Fuck, that's gay." That was not.

It didn't matter. They all laughed. Even Gilbert. Roderich would know that throat-laugh anywhere. He didn't even have to look up.

If he had looked up, he would have noticed Gilbert watching him. If he ever actually looked at Gilbert, he might have caught him like that a lot.

He assumed he was being ignored and his choice was to respond in kind.

The gap between them widened as they crawled, inch by inch, to the coveted spring break. Lizzie stopped asking Roderich to reconsider. Eventually, she admitted that Gilbert wasn't talking much to her.

"He said the boys don't like me."

Roderich saw in her eyes the truth: they didn't like that she talked to him. Gilbert talking to her didn't leave enough degrees of separation, as if Lizzie being friends with both Roderich and Gilbert made the latter, and then themselves, gay by association.

He also saw her quiet blame: if he had backed down, Gilbert wouldn't even be hanging out with them.

"The boys are stupid."

She sighed. She did that a lot, it seemed. He supposed it came with having such a depressing best friend. "Yeah. They really do."

* * *

Break came and went. Roderich's father came home twice during March: once for two days, once for a miraculous week. He didn't really see him, though. His father stayed in his office most of the time, even for meals.

Once, Roderich snuck in to see his computer once he had gone to sleep. His search history made it obvious that he was searching for Roderich's mom.

But then he was gone, with few words exchanged. Roderich wondered if he had figured out where his mom was.

He wondered if his mom had been here whether she would have cared about the whole Gilbert issue.

He wondered if he would have told her.

April was the type of month that went on forever. It was a month of endless frustration. He had allergies. It rained, but not enough to keep the pollen from floating around and making him sneeze. He hated the rain, though, hated the way it made the sky look and how quickly his violin went out of tune with all the weather changes. He hated walking home from the bus stop in the rain, up the hill, to stand, sopping wet, in his empty house where the roof amplified the sound of rain, rain, rain.

It was a frustrating month because his mother was born in April. She wasn't home – again – this year to go to the symphony.

And it was frustrating because Gilbert decided to text him. He didn't know how Gilbert had gotten his number.

-Hey.

-Who's this?

-Gil.

-I don't want to talk to you.

-I know.

-Great. Same page.

-Can we though?

-No

-You haven't stopped.

-Okay, bye.

-Wait! Roddy, I fucked up.

-I know that.

-You don't.

-You're always fucking up. Tell me something I don't know.

-Lizzie won't talk to me.

-For the best.

-I want to fix this.

-I said you can't.

-Give me a chance!

-Why should I?

-Because you and Liz are the best friends I have.

-We aren't friends.

-But we could be.

-You can't be friends with someone just sometimes.

-I don't want that.

-You're full of shit.

-Not trying to be.

-If you're serious, bring me Thai food. I'm craving it.

He didn't expect him to actually show up, soaking wet, holding the takeout bag under his jacket. He was so surprised, he nearly slammed the door in Gilbert's face. But his eyes were so earnest, his face so open.

There was no month more frustrating than April. But it ended well, with both of them sitting in the living room and eating Pad Thai out of the boxes it had come in for the first time since December.

* * *

AN: I hate messing up the formatting with an author's note, so I don't tend to. But I wanted to include the note for this chapter from ao3.

 _Does this cover a lot of time? Yes, yes it does. But we have four years to get through._

 _This is not the longest of the chapters, but it comes close and certainly has a lot of important plot elements. I also just like short chapters. This is an anti-writer's block work, after all._

 _For those of you that have read my old cardverse fic (I wrote that in 2012... I was 15. It's been a while), yes I called Gilbert a "joker" on purpose. Still have a soft spot for that. Might revisit the world at some point._

 _I'm humbled by the people - both here and on ff - that have told me that they remember me from before and that they are glad I am writing PruAus again. I didn't expect to have anyone remember. I am grateful to those of you that have brought up my past works or took a chance on seeing an author subscription notification from someone who hadn't written fic in four years, PruAus in even longer. I'm glad that said people are enjoying the new work and extremely pleased that they see positive changes in my writing. That's the goal. The years of writing endless literary analysis papers certainly should have helped._

 _I am, of course, just as grateful for my new readers. I love seeing your comments - they are what keep me going at this current breakneck speed. As I get busier (and I will get very, very busy) things will slow down but, for now, I hope you enjoy as much content for these two stupid boys as I can possibly provide._


	8. Chapter 8

The excitement for summer vacation had infected the whole school. Everyone was too busy talking up their plans and promising to keep in touch over the all-too-short months to be overly concerned by the shift at Lizzie's lunch table, which was plus one member.

Gilbert had melted back into Roderich's life as if he had never left. As if he had ever really been a part of it. He didn't seem to have a problem stiffing his supposed cool-guy friends, who, in turn, didn't seem to notice being stiffed. Gilbert somehow managed to maintain his coolness, but mostly through reputation (and, it was rumored, a lingering crush from Felicyta).

They didn't talk at school, still, as much as they did when Gilbert was over, for no reason other than an overall lack of much time together. But they also did not seem to attract as much unwanted attention as before.

"I'm going to spend all summer watching my brother at his football practices," Gilbert said into his sandwich, mournfully "My dad doesn't want him to walk back alone."

"Least you aren't being recruited to clean houses all summer." Lizzie was no-nonsense and absolutely uncaring about menial complaints.

"Your mom gives you money to help!"

"You're watching sports! You'd do that anyway."

The two stared at each other, at a fuming stalemate. Sighing, Gilbert returned to his sandwich. "What about you, Roddy? Fun stuff this summer?"

"I'll be at my grandparents' house through much of it." He shrugged, picking at the salad he had packed. "I have a private piano teacher there that will help me pass some of the time, but other than that, it will be pretty uneventful."

"You're going out of country?" Gilbert sounded incredulous. "And that's uneventful?"

"It's like every other summer."

And it was, for the most part. Usually his mother was with him part of the time, giving performances in the neighboring cities the rest of it. Even though they didn't stay with her parents, he had come to think of his paternal grandparents' house as being a place for him and his mom.

That's why he, despite himself, was looking forward to it so much. Maybe, if anywhere, that would be where she would show up.

Hope or not, he still found himself, on the last day of school, not wanting to go. It surprised him, what having real friends that actually wanted to spend time with him changed how he viewed his time there.

"Keep your phone on," Lizzie said, her arms crossed over her chest. "I want to know all the cool things you do in Austria. I'm living vicariously. Don't let me down."

"Don't work too hard," he told her. She snorted.

Gilbert had been signing yearbooks all day – mostly with meaningless promises to hang out over summer or stupid jokes – and he sat down next to Roderich after the last bell rang with a sigh. "What am I gonna do with my free time now?"

"You can borrow my Xbox, if you want," Roderich offered. "I'm not taking it with me."

"I don't want Lud to get his hands on it. I want him to stay jealous," Gilbert said, looking at Roderich out of the corners of his eyes. "Besides, it's not as fun without someone to beat."

"I let you win."

"Nah."

They both stared out over the string of cars picking kids up. They both knew that there was no car waiting to get them.

"Your dad coming to Austria with you?"

"He might show up." Roderich picked up his bag and set it on his lap. "Not for me, though."

"He's a dickwad."

"Gilbert!"

"You know I'm right."

Roderich set his jaw, but didn't argue. He might know the reasons his father was acting the way he was – his own private grieving of his relationship and his wife – but that didn't excuse how he had acted all year. He was still angry about it.

"You'll keep in touch?" Gilbert sounded hesitant, as if he wasn't sure what the answer would be.

"You know I will, as much as time zones allow."

"Good." Gilbert got to his feet, looking down at Roderich. "I'll see you in August?"

Roderich also stood up, smiling slightly. "In August."

Nodding, Gilbert took a couple steps back, then winked at Roderich before turning. "See you around, little rich boy."

Then he was gone, walking toward home. Roderich watched him go, shaking his head. He wondered if Gilbert would look different after two months.

He wondered why he cared.


	9. Chapter 9

The beginning of sophomore year felt like an extension of the year prior, with some minor exceptions. Roderich once again shared a math class with Gilbert – algebra II – but added English with him as well. Lizzie continued to be in orchestra which, sans Charlie, promised to be a calmer experience. The addition of a couple freshman cellos and a violin switching to viola meant a better-rounded sound, if not less personal pressure.

Gilbert had gotten taller over the summer. He hadn't filled out much, but he now towered over Lizzie. Roderich was pleased to see that his own height differential between him and Gilbert had not changed much, meaning that he too had hit a grown spurt. With any luck, Gilbert would not continue to grow like an over-eager weed, as Roderich knew the men in his own family did not tend to be that tall.

They had time for partner work in English, and while Roderich dutifully began marking up the poem they had been given, Gilbert didn't seem as inclined. He was doodling birds around the margins of his page with a yellow highlighter, laying on the ink so thick that it was warping the paper.

"We should be working. You can find sun imagery," Roderich suggested, despite having already found and underlined the instances of said imagery.

"I'm taking Lizzie to homecoming."

"That has nothing to do with the poem."

"Nah."

Roderich sighed, not looking up from the careful highlighter key he was making. "Is there a problem with going to homecoming with her?"

"No. Just wanted you to know." Gilbert frowned down at his latest bright-yellow bird. "Are you gonna be coming single?"

"I'm not planning on going." There was an uncomfortable gnawing feeling in Roderich's stomach. He set down his highlighter and looked up at Gilbert, leaning back in his chair. "School dances aren't really my thing."

"You could come with us, though." Gilbert tried to add an orange beak to the bird, but the paper was so wet that it just bled into the yellow, unable to hold a shape. "If we go alone it'll seem like it's a date."

"Isn't it?"

"No! We're going as friends." Gilbert groaned as he put his highlighter down. "I asked her because I thought it would be nice to go and that we'd have fun, but she's taking it way too seriously."

Roderich raised his eyebrows, feeling a little hurt that Gilbert hadn't talked to him before asking Lizzie to the dance. That was supposed to be what friends did, he thought. Worried about these potentially drama-filled high school moments before they happened. Not after.

"I didn't think she had a crush on you."

"I don't think she does. I think she thinks that I have one on her."

"Do you?"

"No! God no. She's like my sister."

"Then you two shouldn't have any problems at homecoming together."

"You have no pity."

"Not really, no."

Roderich turned back to his poem, not entirely sure why the idea of Gilbert and Lizzie at the dance together bothered him so much. It was probably because it felt like an extension of their friendship that he would be left out of, no matter if he went with them or not. He had no real desire to third-wheel, but also hated the idea of staying home alone.

"You should come," Gilbert tried again, twirling a highlighter between his fingers. "It'll be more fun with you there."

"Don't make me laugh."

"We won't even be dancing much! Just hanging out."

"Why would I buy an overpriced ticket to hang out?"

Gilbert groaned and rubbed his forehead. "Asking you to have fun is like pulling teeth."

"And asking you to do your work is impossible. Sun imagery?"

"Not happening." Gilbert began to doodle on another unfortunate piece of paper.

Roderich returned to the poem, but found that he couldn't concentrate.

* * *

Lizzie also tried to get him to come to the dance. "I just don't want you to be stuck by yourself," she said, jiggling the leg that her viola was resting on. "Homecoming is pretty cool. It's just a big celebration of being back at school."

"That's something to celebrate?"

She gave him a withering look. "It's fun."

"I already told Gilbert I'd pass."

Lizzie huffed, looking over at where the conductor was testing the cellos. "I know. I just thought that if you saw that we both wanted you to come—"

"Doesn't change anything."

She fell silent, then shrugged. "Fine. I don't know why you won't, though."

Roderich also didn't know why he wouldn't. On homecoming night, after he had practiced both violin and piano as well as heated up his leftover pasta, he still hadn't figured out why he had so badly not wanted to go.

It was when the Snapchats started to come in that he understood himself and his reactions a little bit better. Lizzie in her green dress was, of course, stunning. The selfies and group shots that she took were lit up by her. Maybe it was because she so rarely wore makeup, but Roderich swore that he had never noticed just how green her eyes were, just how defined her face was. Even in the pictures with Felicyta – who she had become inexplicably close with over the summer – it was she who stole the show, not the more popular girl.

Roderich was happy for her, happy for how thrilled she looked. But the pictures of Gilbert – Gilbert in a dress shirt and tie, Gilbert wearing slacks, Gilbert with his hair fully brushed, Gilbert with his arms around a beaming Lizzie – made him feel sick.

He sent one text that night, to Gilbert: "You clean up nice."

Gilbert didn't text back.


	10. Chapter 10

Lizzie and Gilbert were dating.

It wasn't like they were official or had told anyone or were acting super couple-y. They acted completely normal at lunch, which Roderich found almost more frustrating than if they had been making out in the seats. But there were subtle differences.

Gilbert walked Lizzie to most of her classes.

Lizzie texted Gilbert during orchestra.

When Gilbert was over at Roderich's house, he was constantly in contact with Lizzie.

They turned toward each other, just barely, while sitting together. This was particularly annoying because they always sat next to each other, with Roderich to the side of one of them, and the tilting made him feel cut off from the conversation.

But they didn't say anything about it. And Roderich didn't ask.

They probably would have remained in unsaid-relationship-limbo if Roderich hadn't turned a corner one day and seen them kissing. They had broken apart when they noticed him, looking sheepish. Roderich had felt punched in the stomach, but all he said was:

"I'm not a fucking idiot."

They didn't hide it after that, but both tried to explain why they hadn't told him.

Lizzie said. "It's not really that serious right now, and we didn't really want to talk about it before we knew where it was going."

Gilbert said, "We've just been friends forever. It just kinda happened. We didn't think it would last at all."

Roderich thought that that was bullshit. He was pretty sure that he would have told them if he started dating someone. It felt like there was a wedge between them: Gilbert and Lizzie, forever a unit that didn't include Roderich.

He thought, however, it would change things more than it did. And things did change. But it wasn't the dramatic falling-out-of-friendship he had seen from the movies and read from the books about teen relationships. Lizzie and Gilbert were just a bit more into each other than they had been before. They spent a little more time with each other. They talked about each other more. But it wasn't as though they talked to Roderich less.

Which begged the question – why was Roderich bothered by it?

* * *

It was November and they were off for Thanksgiving Break. The three of them were hanging out at the mall, eating shitty faux-Chinese food, and people watching. Roderich had a couple of bags leaning against his leg – the haul from the birthday money his father had sent – and had currently won the battle against Lizzie, who wanted to buy him something more than the cake she had brought to school for his sixteenth.

"Nothing ever happens here," Gilbert complained, glaring out at the tiny food court, a forkful of chow mein suspended on its way to his mouth. "Most boring place ever."

"Not true," Lizzie said, raising her eyebrows at Gilbert. "Imagine if we lived further inland. You can't even get somewhere that has things to do then."

"People that live there know what they're getting into," Gilbert muttered, looking down. "They know they're destined for a life of boredom."

"You complain too much." Lizzie took a slow sip of her soda.

"Aren't you bored? Don't you want to do more than all this?"

"I want to do more." She looked away, out over the milling crowd, all the people with the holidays already on their minds. "I'm just not as impatient as you."

Gilbert made a face, turning his attention to Roderich. "What about you, Roddy? Don't you want out of here?"

Roderich was picking at his sweet and sour pork. "It's not as different everywhere else as you think."

"It would be different in a city."

"Different isn't always better."

Gilbert groaned, turning his attention to back to his food. "I'm just sick of being stuck here all the time. My dad just sees me as Ludwig's helper, which would be fine because Lud is great, if I was able to be literally anything else too." He stabbed a piece of orange chicken. "I just can't be just myself here, y'know?"

"Yeah, well, I'm always helping out my mom. I know she works so hard so she can pay for my extracurriculars, but it makes me feel so guilty when I'm not with her. At least hanging out with Ludwig is fun. It's not like it's actual work" Lizzie rested her chin on her palm, staring at Gilbert.

There was silence at the table. After a moment, Roderich felt that Lizzie's eyes had turned to him, her eyebrows raised. He frowned and looked away, letting the silence stretch on for a beat longer. "My dad acts like I don't exist," he said after a moment. The quiet continued past that, until Lizzie put her hand on Roderich's arm. He looked up at her, at her sad, worried eyes, and turned to Gilbert instead.

Gilbert met his gaze and just gave a slight nod. There was a companionship in loneliness, and in the never-ending, overwhelming wave of parental expectations.

Lizzie was expected to be the perfect daughter. Gilbert wasn't expected to be anything. Roderich was expected to be everything.

They faced the world together.


	11. Chapter 11

January. Gilbert and Lizzie were still dating, but they fought. A lot. Roderich had never seen them fight when they were friends, aside from the occasional bickering. But they had had a screaming match right before Winter Formal, and they didn't seem to be recovering. Instead, the hostility simmered, just under the surface, constantly waiting to boil over.

Gilbert hadn't been thankful enough for his birthday gift. Lizzie always expected Gilbert to follow her schedule, not considering his. They were spending too much time together. They weren't spending enough time together.

It was annoying.

"You two were better as friends."

"Why would you even say that?"

"Because it's true."

Gilbert must not have liked the truth, because he didn't talk to Roderich for a full two days after that. When he did, it was to complain.

"I told her I was busy this Saturday. It's not my fault she didn't listen!"

"She probably just forgot."

"Well, now she's mad because I guess she only wants to go ice skating this particular Saturday."

"Why can't you go Sunday?"

"She's busy Sunday."

"When did you two get so busy?"

Gilbert sucked in his cheeks, staring across the math classroom with carefully-constructed dramatics. "That happens, when you grow up."

"You're full of shit."

"Am not!"

"Are so."

"Yeah, probably."

Their math teacher gave them a pointed look, her eyebrows raised high enough to nearly merge with her hairline. They both ducked their heads, factoring a couple more polynomials, bit by boring bit.

"How do I fix it?" Gilbert hissed after a couple moments of silence.

Roderich didn't look up from his worksheet, shrugging. "How am I supposed to know?"

"You're her friend!"

"You are too."

"Yeah, but you're her friend and a neutral party!"

"Take her skating Friday night."

"What?"

"Take her skating earlier than she wanted. It shows initiative."

There was silence again, except for the sound of Roderich's pencil, joining the symphony of others scratching against paper.

"You're a genius."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Peace was restored, for a little bit. But the sense of otherness that Roderich hadn't gotten immediately after his best friends' dating adventure started began to appear, surprising him with its sting each time.

The worst was the steady decline of nights hanging out with Gilbert. Roderich had gotten used to having someone there, at least some of the time, to share the seemingly endless quiet with. He supposed that it made sense that Gilbert's free time be taken up by his girlfriend, but it didn't make it hurt any less.

He did come over, now and again. In between visits, the loneliness stretched on like a void. Abandoned by his mother. His father. And now his best friend.

Roderich supposed that he had a flair for the dramatic.

Gilbert had his own problems. He was increasingly worried about what would happen the next year, when Ludwig entered high school and inevitably joined the football team. He seemed convinced that Ludwig would make it straight to varsity and wouldn't listen to any sort of logic.

"Everyone will like Lud better. They always do."

"He'll be a freshman."

"So? I'm the big brother. I should be the more awesome one."

"It's just football."

"Who are you, even?"

Roderich's father was, somehow, coming home even less. When he did, it was usually at night. Roderich thought that he was avoiding him, which was ridiculous. A full-grown man, avoiding a teenager?

Once, he caught him as he was coming home.

"Dad."

"Roderich. You should be in bed. It's late."

"I have a concert next week. I wanted to ask if you'd come."

"Next week? Roderich, next week I'll be in Denmark."

"It's just one night."

"I just got off a flight. Can we talk about this later?"

"But—"

"Later."

He knew "later" meant "never." He wasn't wrong.

It put Gilbert into a rage. "Your father's an ass."

"Shush."

"Doesn't he care about you at all?"

Roderich didn't answer. He didn't think that he could take the answer.

That was answer enough.

The mid-semester concert passed. His father did not come home.

Lizzie caught him in the green room after everyone else had left. He pretended like he hadn't been crying. She wasn't so easily fooled.

"Roderich, I'm sorry…"

"You should go. Your mom is waiting."

"She wanted to give you and Gil a ride home."

"You two just go. I haven't cleaned up yet."

She sat on the arm of a chair, pulling out her phone for a moment, then crossing her arms. "We'll wait. You're not walking home."

He couldn't help himself. There's only so long that tears and hurt can be held in before they spill over somehow.

That's how, when Gilbert came back into the green room to see what was holding them up, he found Lizzie, cradling Roderich on the floor while he cried.

And when Gilbert joined the hug, that was when Roderich realized that, best friends or not, taken or not, he had a crush.

And he cried harder.


	12. Chapter 12

Gilbert and Lizzie broke up over summer. It wasn't a bad breakup. There was no shouting involved. One day they just decided that they missed being friends rather than boyfriend-and-girlfriend, and that was the end of it. Roderich was sitting right there when they made the decision. They hugged after breaking up.

Roderich thought the whole thing was weird, but he was glad that they were over. Selfishly so. He was also just glad they would stop bickering so much and go back to being normal, back to being best friends.

Junior year started without much change for Roderich, but Gilbert acted like his world was under major upheaval.

Ludwig was the upheaval. He was a freshman. He had suddenly shot up to be taller than any fourteen-year-old needed to be. He was not the smoothest talker, but he was deeply intelligent and, unsurprisingly, an instant football star.

Gilbert was both protective and jealous of Ludwig. He seemed deeply afraid both that people wouldn't like Ludwig, but also that they would like him too much. During practice, he tended to watch, and if Ludwig fumbled the ball, he was sure that he would have to be his brother's personal bodyguard after the next game. If Ludwig scored a touchdown, he felt that he himself was destined to vanish into obscurity.

Roderich didn't understand the mixed emotions Gilbert seemed to have. He actually felt somewhat jealous. Before Ludwig entered high school, he hadn't seen the brothers interact. Now, he realized just how much he was missing, being an only child.

He also had the unfortunate realization that he was not the only boy in Gilbert's life.

Gilbert was obsessed with the life of his little brother, it seemed to Roderich. He was constantly going on about him.

"Did you hear? Lud made the winning touchdown!" he said, one Friday after a football game.

"I don't go to football games," Roderich responded. Gilbert acted like he didn't hear him.

"The crowd went wild! He's like a hero to them!"

"That's nice."

"You gotta see it next time!"

"I don't go to football games."

Gilbert stared at Roderich as though that were sacrilege. "You're a high school boy."

"Plenty of people don't go to football games."

"You'd have fun!"

"Doubt it."

Gilbert sat there, fuming. "Why can't you just live a little?"

"I don't understand football."

Roderich couldn't believe that they were arguing about whether or not he would go to a football game to see Gilbert's little brother crash into people like the moveable mountain he was. But it happened more than once, and it sat between them, the quiet knowledge that Roderich, at least, didn't worship the ground Ludwig Beilschmidt walked on like the rest of the school did.

It wasn't that Roderich disliked Ludwig. They got along well enough. Ludwig sometimes sat at their lunch table, quietly eating and listening to Gilbert and Lizzie talk. It wasn't just at the lunch table, though. Ludwig was a decently talented cellist, so Roderich saw enough of him. He didn't see the star that everyone else seemed to in Ludwig, though. He saw a quiet boy, prone to embarrassment when Gilbert teased him, extremely disciplined and extremely focused.

But all Gilbert saw was his baby brother. His father's favorite. The scared little boy who had been in the car when their mother was t-boned by a man driving much too fast, who had survived because the car had hit the front driver's side and he had been in the back passenger's. The boy that he stayed up with to help the nightmares pass, who he had watched every single football game of – every single one, even when their dad couldn't go because they needed the extra money from work.

And Roderich could never compete with Ludwig.

"You're not the type of guy my brother is usually friends with," Ludwig said once. Lizzie was absent and Roderich was sitting next to Ludwig in orchestra while their conductor worked with the viola section.

"No?"

"No. He's usually friends with jerks."

"Ah, yes. I've met the jerks."

"How did you two become friends?"

Roderich smiled and shook his head, wryly. How exactly had they? "He acted like a jerk."

* * *

Roderich's father came home the weekend before his seventeenth birthday. He was leaving again the day before the actual birthday, but he decided to take Roderich out for dinner. They went to a fancy restaurant on the coast, overlooking the ocean. It was his father's choice. Roderich wasn't a big fan of seafood, but the restaurant luckily had a decent pasta selection. He was a big fan of pasta.

"You're getting so tall," his father said. Roderich thought that was a lie. He knew that he was relatively short, especially compared to his tree of a father. "Getting tall" was code for what it always meant: he was growing up, looking more like his mother with every passing day.

It took all the impulse control in Roderich's body to not tell his father that he was "getting so old." Instead, he just smiled. He was the dutiful son. He knew how to play his role well.

"Thank you. I think I hit a slight growth spurt."

"You are alright on clothes, though?"

"I am."

"You are a junior now, yes?"

"Yes." Roderich decided it was a ridiculous question. What kind of father didn't know for sure what grade his son was in?

"We'll need to talk about college, soon."

That was funny, Roderich thought, because he said as though they actually talked. But he said "yes," and they continued eating.

At the end of the night, his father presented him with a box. It contained a white suit. He said thank you, wondering where he would ever need a white suit, being seventeen and all.

A few days later, Gilbert's carefully picked out music books and Lizzie's beautiful black forest cake – each a fraction of the price of the suit – easily overtook his father's present.

He ate cake with his friends as the sun went down over his house. They sat in the backyard. Gilbert's hair was backlit as he laughed.

And when Gilbert looked at him, smiling, Roderich knew that he had never wanted to kiss anyone so much. But he didn't. He laughed too before eating another small bite.


	13. Chapter 13

Hanukkah passed. Roderich supposed Christmas did too. It didn't matter. Neither were particularly eventful. School had slowed to a crawl, the way it always did in the middle of the year when you had forgotten the beginning but the end seemed too far away to be real. Roderich made it through day after day, homework assignment after homework assignment, period after period. It all blurred together.

Football season had ended, and thus life was mostly back to normal. Gilbert was acting his regular self, not so much the worrying mother hen. Roderich viewed the change with relief. Ludwig seemed to as well. It must be exhausting, being the star of the "All Ludwig, All the Time" show. Lizzie warned Roderich that it would start up again with soccer season.

January, despite its snail pace, did eventually reach Gilbert's birthday. He'd had his license for a year already, but he got a car for that seventeenth birthday. Really, his father had needed to buy a new car for work, and Gilbert got the hand-me-down, but the way he talked about it made it seem far more exciting. Roderich and Lizzie were excited enough too, though, as now they had someone who could drive them around; Roderich hadn't learned and Lizzie was still dutifully filling out the required hours for her permit. Gilbert and his truck from the nineties meant a whole new world of freedom.

The three of them went out to the closest theme park – an hour and a half away – the weekend after his birthday. It was drizzly and cold. Roderich hated thrill rides, but Gilbert loved them. They dragged Ludwig along to make sure that no one was ever alone in the park.

Gilbert and Ludwig were in line for some vomit-inducing roller coaster with the longest, steepest drop Roderich had ever seen. It must have been a pretty exciting ride, because everyone in the park seemed to be waiting for it – the line would take forty-minutes to get through, despite it being the middle of January. Roderich and Lizzie had resigned themselves to the wait and were sharing a funnel cake while sipping hot chocolate, watching the families go by.

"I've started thinking about prom," Lizzie announced, her mouth full of funnel cake. This was unsurprising; Lizzie had joined leadership for her second elective, and the whole of the leadership class was buzzing with how to make junior prom exciting and not just a bland prequel to the main event the following year.

"Ah. I haven't." Roderich's comment was rewarded by a frustrated look from Lizzie. He felt a little bad, but it wasn't his fault that he didn't share the same banal school spirit. Or any interest in heteronormative school dances.

"Roderich. Homecoming is one thing. But you _have_ to care about prom."

Roderich didn't think that he had to care about anything. His care quota was all filled up, regardless, by music and getting through the never-ending expanse of high school. He didn't think that he should have to add a dance that wasn't held until April to the list.

His silence and continued funnel cake eating did not seem to cut it for Lizzie. She leaned forward, her green eyes boring into him. He pretended not to notice or act uncomfortable by it.

"You need to let yourself have fun. Once. Just once! Why can't you do this for yourself? Why can't you do it for me?"

"You would be shocked to realize, I think, that dances don't really cater to boys like me."

Lizzie scoffed, leaning back in her chair. The drizzle and humidity of the day was making her hair frizz. She tried to slick it back down, annoyed. "You're such a pessimist. We can get you a date, I'm sure. There are gay boys at school."

Roderich shot her a look. She had the decency to look somewhat sheepish, as if realizing how that suggestion had sounded. "Being gay doesn't make me desperate, Liz. It's not 'pick a boy, any boy.' I have standards, you know."

She must not have known how to answer that, as she was quiet for a long moment, staring out over the busy promenade of the theme park. Roderich didn't mind the silence. It gave him more time to eat his funnel cake in peace.

All good things end, though. Lizzie spoke again, slowly, as though actually thinking about her words this time. "You like him, don't you?"

Roderich stared at her, a slight frown around his lips. "Like who?" As if he didn't know.

"Gilbert." Lizzie was looking off in the direction of the roller coaster, twisting a lock of hair around one long finger.

"Why would you think that? We're just friends." Roderich stared down at the funnel cake, hard enough to where he could almost imagine boring a hole through it. Lizzie was so good at butting into things that didn't concern her. That didn't concern anybody, really, seeing as there was no way his stupid crush would ever go anywhere. He hadn't forgotten Gilbert telling him that he didn't want other students to think that he was like Roderich. He didn't want people to think he was gay.

So it would never go anywhere and they were definitely just friends.

"Because you're always watching him and you aren't like that with anyone else." Lizzie picked up her hot chocolate, sipping at it slowly. Her attention was back on Roderich, her gaze level and focused. Roderich wondered when on earth the brothers would be done with their stupid ride.

"It wouldn't matter if I did. Which I don't." Roderich knew he sounded anything but convincing. He mostly sounded stubborn.

Lizzie let out an audible sigh. "Why don't you give yourself any credit?"

Roderich refused to look at her. They finished their funnel cakes in silence.

* * *

Roderich wasn't a big fan of Valentine's Day. He'd never seen the point of it, as he'd never had a boyfriend during it. He supposed that, had he had a boyfriend, he would enjoy the excuse for being spoiled. But he also strongly believed that, should he have a boyfriend, he should be spoiled every single day of the year.

But this Valentine's Day, he showed up to his first period – orchestra – to find his instrument locker stuffed with flowers. Roses. The type that was two different colors, pink in the middle, darker and nearly-red at the edges of the petals. He stood in front of it, dumbly, holding the handle of his case so tightly that he could barely feel his fingers. He could hear some of the girls in his section giggling behind him and he turned his head, eyebrows raised. They shut up.

Lizzie wasn't in the room yet, but Ludwig was. He was getting his cello out of its case but watching Roderich with an amused sort of smile. Roderich felt immediately suspicious. He wasn't used to Ludwig smiling.

"You know something about this." It wasn't really a question. Roderich heard how firm his own voice sounded. Good. He didn't want to sound as shaken by this as he was. It was clearly a joke, after all. Probably from some girl poking fun at him being gay.

Ludwig just shook his head. "It was like that when the room opened."

Roderich was pretty sure that answer was bullshit, but he didn't press it. He went over to the locker and jerked the door open. A couple of flowers fell at his feet. He shuddered to think how much they all must have cost. For a joke.

There was a folded note on top of the pink-and-red pile. He set his violin down at his feet and snatched it up. It had his name on the front, in block letters. Not a mistake, then.

He opened it to see a line of typed text, barely any information at all. Just "be mine, Valentine?" It wasn't even signed.

Roderich resisted the urge to crumple up the note. Instead, he slipped it into his pocket and shut the locker. He didn't know what to do about all the roses. He supposed he would have Lizzie help him carry them later. The flowers hadn't done anything wrong, after all.

When he turned around, Ludwig was laughing. He gave him the stink eye. It didn't make Ludwig stop.

At lunch, Gilbert was acting strange. He was fidgety. He seemed to be avoiding Lizzie's gaze, but she kept shooting him pointed looks, eyebrows raised. Roderich supposed it was awkward, them having been a couple the year before.

Lizzie gave up and turned her attention to Roderich. "So. Any leads on the locker situation?"

Roderich shook his head, finishing up a bite of his apple. "No. If anyone knows anything, they must have been sworn to secrecy." He scowled down at the table. If he was the butt of some joke, it was an elaborate one and no one was fessing up to it.

The gossip about it must have spread quickly, though, because some guys had been giving him disgusted looks, as though they had been reminded that he was gay.

As though he had been hiding it?

"Hm. What a mystery." Lizzie crumpled up her sandwich wrapper. The table slipped into silence.

* * *

The knock on Roderich's door that evening came as a shock. He opened it to see Gilbert, rocking back and forth on his feet. His skateboard was already propped against the doorframe.

"You don't usually come Wednesdays."

"Yeah."

Roderich narrowed his eyes slightly. Gilbert's arms were both behind his back. He looked like a young boy, hiding something. He had the same sort of earnest face, too.

"Did you want to come in?"

Gilbert didn't answer. He just jerked his hand out toward Roderich. He was clutching a single rose. Roderich stared at it. It was a match to the ones that had filled his instrument locker that morning. The ones that were now in a few vases on the kitchen table.

"What's this?" he asked, not moving to take it. Gilbert's hand drooped slightly, but he quickly brought it back up.

"Um… Forgot this one." Roderich noticed just how red Gilbert's face was. He reached out and took the rose. It, like all the others, had had its thorns carefully broken off so there was no danger of being pricked. He stared down at the petals. It was a particularly pretty one, redder than some of the others.

"Did you leave all the flowers?" Roderich asked, his voice even. He looked up again to see Gilbert's hesitant nod. "And the note?"

Gilbert shifted on his feet, back and forth. "Did you like them?"

"Was it a joke?"

A stricken look crossed Gilbert's face. This was weird. This wasn't the Gilbert that he was used to, or really any Gilbert that he had seen before.

"Oh, god, you thought it was a joke?" Gilbert let out a shaky breath. He ran his fingers through his hair. A few strands remained sticking up. "No joke. Very serious."

"The note too?" Roderich stared at Gilbert. Hard. Gilbert squirmed under his gaze.

"None of it was a joke." Gilbert's voice was so soft. His eyes had fallen to the ground.

Roderich stepped out of the way of the door. He was looking out over Gilbert's head, trying to process, trying to understand. Gilbert slowly, hesitantly, came into the house.

"If it's not a joke, then what is it?" Roderich felt as though his voice was coming from somewhere else. A different time, maybe.

"Me asking you to be my Valentine's date?"

Roderich turned around, staring over at Gilbert. Gilbert was staring just as hard at the ground. The silence between them was solid. Roderich thought he might be able to reach out and touch it, spanning the distance.

He closed the door.

"You're not gay, though."

"No." Gilbert still wasn't looking up.

"So it is a joke."

Gilbert groaned, finally breaking his staring contest with the ground. He met Roderich's eyes. "There's more than two fucking options, Roderich."

"Oh." Roderich looked down at the new flower that Gilbert had handed him. He took a few deep breaths. He glanced back up. "Pizza?"

Gilbert looked relieved, one hand falling to his side from yet another nervous trip through his hair. "Yeah. Yeah, pizza's good."

Roderich placed a delivery order online: half pepperoni, half veggie. He curled up on the couch, Gilbert next to him, while they waited for the arrival. They watched stupid reality TV.

They stayed like that, only with added pizza, through the night. Gilbert didn't leave until the early morning hours, needing to get ready for school.

Roderich fell asleep on the couch after he left, smiling, just a little.


	14. Chapter 14

They weren't dating. Roderich wasn't sure what the word for what they were doing actually _was_ , but it wasn't dating. In Roderich's mind, dating – really dating – meant that you told people about it. It meant what Gilbert had done with Lizzie where people seemed to just universally know what was going on.

He had brought it up, once. "Should we make this official?" he had asked, watching Gilbert play Portal. The question had made Gilbert falter, then pause the game, just holding the controller, staring at the TV.

Roderich had decided it was better not to wait for an answer. He had just said "Never mind," and looked down at his phone. After a moment, Gilbert started the game up again. That was the end of it.

But it certainly felt like they were dating. Gilbert was over more often than he had been. He often stayed nights. They cooked together. They argued, sometimes, about what to get to eat or what to do with their time. Sometimes they held hands. They talked about what would come later, when maybe they'd go to college, maybe they'd have to be adults, maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

But it was different at school.

As in nothing changed at school.

They sat with Lizzie between them. They didn't look much at each other. They never held hands. Gilbert talked about going to prom, even joked with Lizzie about going with her, despite them having broken up. Roderich talked about not going to prom. Lizzie was none the wiser. No one suspected a thing.

Except for Ludwig. He watched them, frowning. It made the hair on Roderich's neck stand up, as he would sometimes turn around and see him, just staring.

He mentioned it to Gilbert: "Do you notice Ludwig staring at us?"

Gilbert said: "What?"

Roderich had decided that Gilbert was the least observant person ever to exist.

He didn't seem to notice or care that it rather hurt Roderich. All the secrecy. Sure, Gilbert and Lizzie had waited to see if things would get serious before spilling on it, but he thought that they might be serious, if Gilbert would just let them be. He felt as though he were standing on one side of a wall and Gilbert was on the other. He felt as though he was trying to shout over the wall, but Gilbert couldn't hear him.

He was shouting: "Why are you ashamed of me?"

And Gilbert was calling back, saying: "What?"

But Roderich didn't know how to interrupt the pattern. He didn't know how to get them past the hand-holding and the secrecy and the shared Thai food and Gilbert _always_ being at his house and he _never_ being at Gilbert's. It churned in his stomach. He felt the distance between them. It was growing.

Eventually, Gilbert noticed it too.

"What's wrong, Roddy?"

Roderich didn't know when he had decided it was okay for Gilbert to call him that. Usually he hated nicknames. Hated every single damn thing about them.

"Nothing."

They were sitting on the floor in the living room. Well, Roderich was sitting, his back leaning against the foot of the couch. Gilbert was laying down. He had been looking at his phone, but now it was sitting beside him, still lit up. He'd been texting Ludwig, telling him that he'd pick him up from soccer practice soon.

Gilbert frowned and rolled onto his stomach, propping his chin up. Roderich could feel his gaze on his face, but he didn't look at him. He was scrolling on his own phone. Scrolling endlessly.

"It's not nothing. You've been acting upset for days."

"Days?"

"Weeks."

Roderich looked at Gilbert now. The frown didn't look right on his face. He looked away again.

Gilbert tried again. "Roderich."

Roderich sighed and put down his phone. He stared at the blank TV for a moment. He'd considered turning it on, a while ago, just to have the background noise. Not the silence between them, gaping there. "Yes?"

"You're not telling me what's wrong." Gilbert sat up, moving to lean against the couch next to Roderich. Roderich could feel the warmth between their shoulders. There were only a couple centimeters of space between them. It felt like miles.

"It won't do any good if I do."

"You don't know that."

Roderich shot Gilbert a look. But Gilbert's gaze was even. He was not to be deterred. "What are we doing here, Gilbert?"

"Hanging out?"

Roderich looked away again. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go into the kitchen, pick up the still-warm pizza on the counter, and throw it at Gilbert. Hanging out? "Is that it?"

Gilbert hesitated. He reached over for his phone, a safety net, then thought better of it and retracted his hand. He didn't know what to do with his hands, though, and they sat limply in his lap. "What do you want to be doing?"

"I don't know. Anything. I just want to know where we stand."

Gilbert was silent. Roderich closed his eyes. He felt the silence as though it were a physical presence in the room.

"Why does it bother you so much?" Gilbert was speaking slowly. He never spoke slowly. He always spoke as quickly as possible, to get as many words out there as he could manage. He always had so much to say.

That wasn't the case around Roderich, though. He'd noticed that, lately. Gilbert was more careful around him.

"Because this not knowing makes me feel like I don't matter. I don't want to be just someone's secret." Roderich pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, rested his chin on his knees. He could feel Gilbert wince.

"You think that?"

"What am I supposed to think?"

Roderich looked over to see Gilbert staring at the ground. It took another minute for a response. "It's not you, Roddy. You matter. So much. You really fucking matter. But I'm not ready for all of it. I'm not ready for people to know. And it's not because of you."

"If I were a girl, people would know."

Gilbert didn't try to argue. "Yeah."

"So it is me."

Gilbert looked up. Their eyes met. Gilbert looked like he was in pain. Roderich knew that he was in pain. He'd been in pain the whole time.

"No. No, Roderich. It's me."

Roderich got to his feet. "Strangely, that doesn't make me feel better."

Gilbert remained sitting on the floor. He looked limp, like a rag doll. Roderich wanted to take back his words, go back to an hour ago, when they had sat here, eating the pizza and laughing.

"What do you want me to do about it?" Gilbert's voice sounded hollow.

"Figure out what you want between us. And not make me hide it."

"And if I can't?"

"Then come back when you can."

That was their relationship. Roderich was always giving Gilbert ultimatums. He had never felt so bad about it before, though. Gilbert had never looked so lost.

But he stood. He picked up his phone. And he looked Roderich in the eyes, giving a slight nod. "Right. I've got to get Ludwig now."

"Okay."

"Okay."

And Roderich watched Gilbert head out into the darkness of the late winter.

He'd never hurt so much, watching him go.

But he got a text, later, after he knew that Gilbert and Ludwig were already home. It said: "Wanna come to my place this weekend?"

And Roderich was suddenly smiling again.


	15. Chapter 15

"This weekend" meant Saturday. Gilbert had walked up the hill to meet Roderich at noon; they walked back down together. Gilbert lived in a small apartment complex behind a strip mall that Roderich had barely ever glanced at, despite living so close. He fished out the keys to a door with chipped paint and pushed it open, not looking at Roderich once through the whole process. Roderich guessed that it was because there was a significant size difference between their homes. He didn't press the issue.

Gilbert's apartment was small but immaculate. They stepped into a living room with plenty of seating space – old, comfortable couches that were definitely not leased, but rather well-loved – and gaming controllers carefully placed on a coffee table. Roderich could see into the galley kitchen, but not down the hallway. He did know the apartment was empty, save for them, from the silence that permeated the space.

That didn't matter. What mattered was that he was here.

Gilbert had his hands shoved into his pockets. He finally looked at Roderich, rocking back onto the heels of his feet. "So. Um. Hungry?"

Roderich nodded and Gilbert dashed into the kitchen. Roderich followed to see him getting out supplies for grilled cheese sandwiches – the way Roderich liked them, with both gouda and cheddar, complete with spinach and bell peppers. He leaned against the counter, letting his eyes wander the kitchen. The fridge had a few magnetic pictures of the family; in the most recent one, both boys towered over their father. Next to the photographs was a drawing down by a child Ludwig, if the backwards-L signature in the bottom corner was to be believed. In all the pictures, including the drawn one, the whole family was smiling.

Roderich couldn't think of a single picture of him and his father that was displayed in the house. He certainly couldn't think of one that existed that was not simply posed for holiday cards.

He turned his attention back to Gilbert. He could feel the nerves radiating off him.

"Gil."

Gilbert glanced up from chopping vegetables. He smiled, but it was too big. "Yeah?"

"You don't need to freak out. I'm not judging you."

Gilbert's smile faltered. He looked back down at the vegetables, moving them into a pan and turning on the heat. "I know. It just feels…"

"I know." Roderich moved closer to Gilbert, picking up pieces of bread to butter. "But this is nice."

"Nice?" Gilbert's voice was incredulous. Roderich tried to see the other side of it. To Gilbert, who lived in a run-down apartment complex, whose father did everything he could to make sure that their space remained clean and livable, who shared a room with his younger brother, Roderich's house with room after room of unused, unnecessary space that could be filled with instruments and books and games… That was nice. At best, Roderich's choice of words must have seemed placating. At worst, condescending.

"Nice," Roderich repeated. "This looks like somebody lives here."

There was quiet, except for the sizzling of hot vegetables. Gilbert drained the oil off them and took Roderich's buttered bread, filling the slices up with cheese and vegetables. The sizzling of the sandwiches replaced the former noise.

"My dad's at work," Gilbert said after a moment. "And Ludwig's at a friend's house. They'll be back for food, later, if you're still here. Up to you, though."

"I have no other plans." Roderich watched Gilbert flip over the sandwiches. Each was a crispy golden brown. They'd made plenty of grilled cheese before, over countless other days when they were tired of their delivery options. It was something that Gilbert had known for sure he could make, back when they were fourteen. He'd made plenty for Ludwig, on nights when his father worked late and came home too exhausted to cook.

Gilbert glanced up with a quick smile. Roderich returned it. Both went back to watching the sandwiches cook.

They passed the rest of the afternoon as they normally did. This time, though, instead of being sprawled over Roderich's living room floor, they piled themselves onto Gilbert's bed. Gilbert's room was nothing like the impersonal and organized one Roderich lived in. It was split neatly down the middle, an invisible line separating the spaces of the two boys. Ludwig's was closer to what Roderich was used to. His bed was made, the green comforter neatly tucked in, and every book on his shelf was lined up perfectly. He left nothing on his desk and his walls were bare except for the occasional soccer poster.

Gilbert's side was organized chaos. His quilt was half-on, half-off the bed, but the sheet below had hospital corners. His books were piled haphazardly on his shelf, but that was because he had too many books for the space. Homework was strewn all over the desk, dating back potentially since high school began, though Roderich knew that Gilbert kept a carefully marked binder with all his recent work in his backpack. But the walls were the biggest difference – not a single bit of white showed through. They were instead covered with posters of every type – old action movies, punk bands, video games – and pictures, wallpapering every space where a poster ended. Looking around, Roderich saw his own face, over and over again. He even found the picture Lizzie had taken at that first orchestra concert.

Instead of spending their time only on their phones, they talked. Gilbert propped himself up against the wall underneath a giant poster of Brendon Urie, Roderich curled up against the pillows. There was something about the smaller space, about how personal it was, that made it easier to talk than trying in the echoing caverns of Roderich's house.

They talked about food:

"Why do you insist on having vegetables on your pizza? It's a cheat food."

"I like vegetables."

"No one likes vegetables that much, Roderich."

"Well, at least I don't eat pepperoni."

"What's wrong with pepperoni?"

"Everything."

They talked about school:

"Pretty sure I've already got senioritis."

"We're not seniors yet."

"Exactly."

"It's really not that bad, Gilbert."

"Are you kidding me? Have you seen the amount of work Mrs. Banka gives us?"

"It's not that bad."

"I get it. You're a masochist."

"You're disgusting."

They talked about family:

"I love my dad, but I really don't want to do what he does. I used to think that construction was cool because, y'know, big trucks and shit, but now I know it's not even what _he_ wants to do. There's just always something that needs to be fixed, so there's always work."

"I don't love my dad and I also don't want to do what he does."

"Aw, really? You'd probably make a great lawyer! You love to argue with people!"

"I love to be right. My father's a defense lawyer for people with a lot of money. As far as I can tell, he's rarely right, just good at twisting the truth."

"Well, if you're not gonna be a lawyer… Maybe Lud would make a good one."

"Are you just looking for someone to be a lawyer?"

"Maybe. In case I ever need one."

And they talked about Charlie, for the first time, really:

"You didn't help me."

"Yeah. I was kind of an idiot."

"I never understood why you didn't at least help me pick up my stuff."

"I thought he might still be watching. I was big into thinking that seniors had all this power over freshman. I was pretty sure that if I did anything, he'd ruin me."

"He was just a mean orchestra nerd. Not like a football star."

"I know. I was stupid."

"It really hurt. I had thought we were kind of friends, but you just let me get humiliated."

"I'm sorry."

"I dealt with a lot for being gay at my last school. I wanted somebody to show me it wasn't like that here."

"What happened at your last school?"

"There were posters."

"Oh."

"Yeah. And spray-paint."

"At a middle school?"

"Mhm. And some of my things would just go missing. I had to lock up my violin."

"They were that bad?"

"Rich, repressed boys with conservative families."

"I didn't know people were still like _that_."

"After all that happened, my mom left."

"She… What?"

"I think it was probably because of my dad doing something or not doing something or whatever… Their relationship was shitty. But at the time, I really thought my mom left because she didn't want a gay son."

Gilbert took a moment to respond, staring down at the blue, almost-black quilt below him. He picked at a loose thread. "I was scared if people thought I was gay at school, my dad would find out. Or Ludwig would. And they'd be disappointed in me because I'm not enough of a man. But I knew I was bi, even then."

"What changed?"

Gilbert gestured weakly over toward Ludwig's side of the room. "He's got a crush on some guy he met on the internet. He thinks I don't know, but I'm his big brother. I know everything. And I didn't want him to see me being ashamed of myself and think that meant he couldn't be who he was."

"But you still haven't come out. We're still not… Official."

"I still don't know what my dad would think." Gilbert shrugged. Helpless. "And I'm not sure I'm ready to face it."

Roderich stared across the room, focusing on a giant Harry Potter poster. Only the poster wasn't of Harry, it was of Draco. "Will you ever?"

"Someday."

He turned his head and met Gilbert's eyes. Gilbert looked beseeching: please Roderich, don't hate me, I'm trying. "Did you like me, then? When I had that whole mess with Charlie?"

At that, Gilbert laughed. "Roderich, I knew you were cute the instant I saw you before school even started. So. Yeah."

Roderich leaned forward, eyebrows raised. "So right now. What are we?"

"We're… I don't know. In transition."

"From?"

"Friends."

"To?"

"You know."

"I do. I want you to say it, though."

Gilbert let out a gust of breath. "Boyfriends, I think."

Roderich was satisfied with that. He leaned back against the pillows. "That's what I wanted to hear."


	16. Chapter 16

"Your mom's a famous violinist, right?"

"Hm?" Roderich was curled up in the corner of Gilbert's couch. He was now comfortable with being there, comfortable with the revolving door of Ludwig coming in and out of practices, of Gilbert's father coming home to collapse on the bed, of Lizzie, sometimes, showing up unannounced. Gilbert still preferred to go up to Roderich's house, but Roderich liked the business of the apartment. "Yeah."

"So if you want to find out where she is… Couldn't you just Google her?"

Roderich looked up from his phone, staring at Gilbert. Such a simple question. No simple way to answer it. "I could."

Gilbert's eyebrows were raised, quizzically. He had that knowing look on his face, the "I just solved your problem, what's the issue?" look. "So… Shouldn't we Google her?"

"No." Roderich put the phone down. He tucked his knees against his chest and rested his chin on them. How could he explain the hours he had spent at fourteen, his mother's name typed into the search bar, his finger hovering over the enter key? How could he explain how many times he had nearly thrown his laptop across the room? "I don't want to search for her. I want her to search for me." The rest of the words caught in his throat. How could he possibly say: I want her to want me?

It seemed as though Gilbert understood, though. He was on the other couch cushion and moved his foot to nudge against Roderich's leg. He smiled, a small smile. "What if she can't find you?"

"She could, if she wanted to. We didn't go all that far." Roderich looked down, studying his bare toes. This was his stubbornness, rearing its ugly head. Stubbornness in that he couldn't bear to be disappointed. He couldn't bear to find his mother and go to her and have her reject him. It had been three years. What was the point?

Gilbert was talking, though. He was talking and making it clear that he didn't actually understand. That he had no fucking clue. "If my mom was out there… And I knew she was… I'd want to at least try."

"It's different. Your mom wanted you."

"What makes you so sure yours doesn't?"

"I think it's pretty obvious."

Ludwig came home, then, tumbling into a tense silence. They both looked up at him. He looked back, sweat sticking the hair to his forehead, cleats dangling from his hand.

"I interrupt something?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

Gilbert made a face and stood up. "No. You just stink."

Roderich laughed at that. It took a moment, but Ludwig cracked a smile too. He shrugged, nonchalant. "Hope you don't want to use the bathroom."

"Go for it."

About a minute later, Roderich heard the shower start up. Between one moment and the next, Gilbert was next to him on the couch, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He turned his head to face a grin: bright, but a little bit guilty. An apologetic smile, Gilbert style.

"Want to go shopping?"

"Please."

They spent the rest of the day at the mall. Roderich bought new clothes and pretended not to notice Gilbert's nervous glances, making sure that they weren't noticed out and about without Lizzie. Their hands bumped a couple times, another thing he pretended not to notice, seeing as nothing came of it. But it was easy to keep his mind off it all; it was busy, still stuck on Gilbert's probing questions from earlier.

Gilbert dropped him off at his house. His father was home, which was a surprise, but he was holed up in his office. Roderich knew that he would be gone before he woke up the next morning.

He didn't think about doing it, but before he knew it, he was staring at his computer. He had "Johanna Edelstein" typed into the search bar.

He shut the computer without clicking enter. Instead, he pulled out a notebook and ripped out a page. He started writing, with no real intention behind it:

 _Mom,_

 _I don't understand why you left. Well, I do. A little. You and dad never really fit. That's okay. I don't really fit with him either. In fact, ever since you left, I've barely seen him. He drowns himself in his work. You probably do too, but at least your work has some kind of heart behind it. I imagine it must be hard, being separated, even for you. Maybe it's hard for you to not be here with me. Maybe you're relieved._

 _I've kind of raised myself. I'm not so sure I've done a good job. I wish I could talk to you about it. I bet you had some boy problems in high school. Only I don't know if you're okay with me having "boy problems." I never got the chance to ask. You never offered the chance._

 _I take good care of your violin. I'm in the orchestra at school, which I know isn't as good as what you do, but. My final junior year concert is coming up soon. I know you won't be there, but I like to think that you will be. Every time. Next year I'm supposed to accompany the choir on piano. I don't know how you'd feel about that. Your son. An accompanist. I know you were always more into being the soloist. The center of attention._

 _Next year I graduate. Dad won't be there. He's never there for anything. He doesn't even try to find out what's happening with me. I wish you'd come. But I know that high school graduation isn't that important._

 _Back to the boy problems… His name is Gilbert. I've had a crush on him since high school started and it's finally like I have a chance… But he won't do anything with me. He barely even looks at me at school._

 _I think he's ashamed of me. And I don't know what to do._

 _I miss you. And I wish I could say I forgive you. But I don't._

 _Your son,_

 _Roderich_

He stared at it for a long moment, the whole whiny rant, pointless and going nowhere. And he crumpled it up. And he threw it in the trash. And he wiped his tears.

And he left the house.


	17. Chapter 17

It was dark outside, and bitingly cold, the way late-March nights were like to be. The sky was clear, adding to the chill, but Roderich was glad for the comfort of the stars. He had worn a long-sleeved shirt that day, which he was grateful for, but he had neglected to grab a jacket during his bid for the door. He wasn't going back in, though, lest his absent father decide to pretend he cared for a bit. Roderich wanted nothing to do with parents, especially as they seemed to want nothing to do with him.

In his head, the task was easy: he was to walk down the hill, go into Gilbert's apartment, and ask to spend the night. But he found himself standing in the parking lot for the complex, glad that his feet had carried him true, staring blankly around himself. Something seemed off. Finally, he realized that Gilbert's truck wasn't there. There would be no point in trying, then. It had been stupid anyway. Gilbert was probably tired of him after spending the day joined at the hip.

He turned, heading toward the strip mall. It was dark except for the frozen yogurt place, which he regarded with a shiver. He supposed it would be warm in there, but the chill in his bones begged him to keep walking away from frozen dessert. He almost went back up the hill but couldn't bear the thought of returning to that ghost house now. He kept moving.

Before long, he had stopped paying attention to where he was. He wasn't trying to get anywhere in particular and wouldn't have known how to get there anyhow. He always had Gilbert and his car to take him anywhere further than the apartments. He didn't know what lay beyond them. It didn't matter.

As he walked, he thought about his first sort-of-boyfriend, Toni, who had been in the States for only their eighth-grade year while his father worked out some business deal that made Roderich's eyes glaze over whenever it was explained to him. Toni spoke rapid-fire Spanish and Roderich spoke zero, which was okay because it was vice versa for German. They hung out after school and talked about other cute boys and held hands because there was no one else to hold hands with. Toni was decent on guitar and Roderich had begged and begged to get serenaded. He'd gotten that serenade, in the orchestra room after hours. And because they thought it was empty, they'd kissed, a first for both of them. The next day brought the posters Roderich had told Gilbert about and Toni—bright, shining Toni, who lit up every room he went into—had retreated into himself. It ended with the guitar and that kiss.

It wouldn't have worked out anyway, Roderich knew. It was a match of convenience, of you're-the-only-other-obviously-gay-boy-here, not of the desperate wanting he had felt when Gilbert had first come by on that godforsaken skateboard. But it had been fun and easy, and he had smiled far more often than he normally did. He had lost touch with Toni since then, but he liked to think of him happy and gay and back in Spain, somewhere far away from where stuck-up thirteen-year-olds who couldn't appreciate the romance of a Spanish guitar played by a curly-haired boy who never tucked in his shirt just because he'd been playing it for another boy: the reed-thin and quiet teachers' pet.

Those stuck-up thirteen-year-olds had covered the hallways and lockers in rainbow posters, outing them to the rest of the school with homophobic tropes and the assumption that both boys were closet perverts out to attack the middle school boys and steal loving middle school boyfriends from innocent middle school girls. The video of their awkward, too-quick first kiss was passed around all three grades. Roderich had taken to hiding in the classrooms of sympathetic teachers during break and lunch, but he couldn't hide from the guilt that Antonio, who had worked so hard to be popular despite his halting English and accent, who had finally breached into full acceptance, was outcast right before graduation.

He had personally been grateful that it was so close to graduation, though. He had crossed that stage and never looked back. That, he had assumed, was the worst that could happen.

Memories of graduation came with their own level of bitterness, however. He had been angry and nervous the whole day, convinced that Geoffrey Month, the richest boy at the rich-kid school, was going to somehow make him a spectacle. It would have only been him, luckily, as Toni had gone back to Spain the day before walking because of an emergency with his grandmother. But Geoffrey did nothing, just stood there with his smirk. It had been enough to take over all Roderich's thoughts, sending him into a worried frenzy.

The real problem with Roderich's thoughts being so occupied was that graduation was the last time he had seen his mother.

She had been so worried over him, constantly fixing his hair, desperately trying to position him to get the best picture for her parents. He hadn't paid her any real attention, but at one point her fussing had gotten so horrendously annoying, so detracting from the obvious problem of _Geoffrey Month planning something_ , that he had snapped at her. He remembered it now, with a wince: "God, mom, I'm not five!"

She had stopped. And she had pulled back. And she had apologized. She took his picture without any more care for how he looked. And she smiled and clapped as he crossed the stage.

The next morning, she was gone.

At first, Roderich had been so convinced that he had driven her away by snapping, as if the frustration of a usually-silent fourteen-year-old was enough to drive away a woman hardened by years of harsh music critics. After that, he had been so convinced that she had left because he was gay. That Geoffrey had said something to her. That Geoffrey _hadn't_ mentioned anything, she had just known and hated Roderich for it.

It had been easier, in some ways, to blame his abandonment on something that seemed tangibly wrong with him than it had been to face that his parents' marriage, which had always seemed like a fairytale, some kind of heterosexual ideal of life, to him, was falling apart at the seams. It was easier to blame something he thought he could push aside and ignore than the thought that his own existence, the fact that he had even been born, might be too much for her to bear. A reminder of her broken marriage.

But he couldn't even ignore the part of himself that had been his scapegoat. It had hit him hard, a ton of bricks to the chest, the instant Gilbert had smiled at him. And it was, from that moment, completely irreversible and intimately on his mind. His father, he knew, wished it wasn't the case. But he, too, had more difficulties with Roderich looking so much like his mother—that unavoidable blend between her delicate beauty and his father's pointed features—and being a constant reminder of his own personal failure than he did with his son liking boys.

It still wasn't something Roderich was comfortable bringing up.

Blinking around, he found himself in an unfamiliar park. It had a large soccer field connected to the mismatched wood-and-plastic play structure. It was empty, as parks tend to be in the dark when people aren't using them as an empty space to drown out feelings through booze or drugs. He went and sat on the bottom of the slide. His pocket buzzed—a text—and he had the vague realization that it had been doing that frequently. He fished it out.

-Where are you? I swear, Roderich, I'll call the cops!

It was from Gilbert. Roderich glanced around himself and shrugged.

-Some park. I don't know.

The response was almost immediate.

-Some park? Roddy, what are you doing?

-Walking. I needed air. You weren't home.

-I was picking Lud up. I dropped him off and came right back to see you.

-You didn't tell me.

-I texted you!

Oh. So he had, Roderich discovered, scrolling through the older texts. As he read through the increasingly panicked messages, a new one came in:

-Send me your location, I'm coming to get you.

Roderich did share his location, then put his phone away. The backlight had ruined his night vision. Turning his gaze back up to the stars, he thought about being little, at his grandparents' home in Austria, looking up at the sky and listening as they pointed out different constellations. He never could remember them all, but he had always thought it cute, their love of something so cold and untouchable. So bright.

He heard an engine but didn't let his gaze move from his study of the stars. He knew the noise well enough. Gilbert's truck. He didn't budge from the slide, but eventually heard the crunching of Gilbert's footsteps on the tanbark. When Gilbert made it to him, standing in front of the slide, he finally turned his head to look at him.

Gilbert's hands were folded across his chest. He looked furious and Roderich couldn't for the life of him figure out why. Realizing his own hands were cold, he tucked them under his legs, blinking up at the sharp glare. The darkness was messing with his vision, despite the glasses.

"Hi," he said.

That caused Gilbert to explode. "'Hi?' I just spent the past hour trying to find you and that's all you can say? And I find you in an empty park in _this_ part of town? You're lucky you didn't get jumped! A rich boy like you, wandering around in the middle of the goddamn night… And all you say is 'hi'?"

Roderich stared up at Gilbert, dumbfounded. "It's barely ten," he managed, stuck on the fact that it was hardly the middle of the night. He didn't understand why Gilbert was mad, but he noticed the other boy was shaking.

"You have no common sense! You wanted a walk so bad, you should've texted me! And brought a fucking jacket!"

The anger was tiring. Roderich got to his feet, sliding his still-cold hands into his pockets. "You don't own me, Gilbert. If I want to take a walk I can take a walk. Without your permission." His voice was calm, but it carried with it the full weight of his exhaustion, the heaviness of years of being told what to do without receiving anything in return.

He had taken a step to walk away when Gilbert's hand landed on his arm. Fingers curled into his sleeve, holding him there. He didn't turn to look at Gilbert, wanting the force of his words to remain.

"You scared me." Gilbert paused and Roderich waited for more, turning his head very slightly to indicate that he was listening. "I'm sorry."

Roderich considered not responding. Instead, he sighed, turning his head away again. "You didn't need to be scared. I can handle myself."

They were both silent, then. There was the unsaid truth hanging between them that neither was quite sure that Roderich could actually handle himself. He hadn't even known where he was. He still didn't, other than the fact that it was a park and that Gilbert thought it was a bad part of town.

"Roddy, c'mon… Look at me." Gilbert's voice was softer than normal, as if he was afraid of breaking something.

Roderich did turn, very slowly, on his heel, glancing at Gilbert, then away again. He was facing his direction, at least. Gilbert's free hand moved under Roderich's chin, tilting his face back up. Roderich blinked up at the serious eyes, the frown that still looked so out of place, despite how many times he had seen it.

"Did something happen with your dad?" he asked. Roderich was keenly aware of Gilbert's fingers, still under his chin, his thumb resting on the dip right in the middle.

"No." His voice was just as quiet as Gilbert's had been, not wanting to disturb the peace of the night, especially in the calm after the shouting. "He's home, but I haven't seen him yet."

"Then why were you just wandering around?"

Something caught in Roderich's throat. "Being home didn't feel right."

Silence again. Gilbert didn't move his hand. Roderich stood there, feeling attached to Gilbert by some invisible string.

"I was so worried someone would hurt you."

"You worry too much."

"Roderich…"

"Gilbert."

Roderich wasn't sure where it came from. The movement from one moment to the next didn't flow. It skipped, like the heart missing a beat, shuddering to restart, unsure of how to continue the pattern.

But Gilbert was kissing him. Suddenly, breathlessly, under the stars. And he kissed him back.

And it was much better than two scared-to-death fourteen-year-olds in a not-quite-empty orchestra room.


	18. Chapter 18

"We gonna sit here all night?"

Gilbert's voice cut into Roderich's thoughts. They were sitting in Gilbert's truck and Roderich was staring at the house. It was dark, save for one window on the second floor. His father's office, usually the darkest room in the house. For some reason, Roderich had expected his father to have left, despite it being the middle of the night.

"Roderich?"

He must have spaced out again. He turned to look at Gilbert, blinking away the spots from his ruined night vision, gone from staring too hard at that blasted window. His lips turned up, slightly because, damn it, he didn't want Gilbert to worry. Again.

"Sorry. I haven't decided that I want to go in yet."

Gilbert ran his fingers through his hair in that way that made the already-messy locks messier. That disorderliness that looked purposeful. There was that concern on his face that was obvious in the way he chewed on the corner of his lip, just barely, so that you'd have to really know him to realize he was thinking or upset or nervous or whatever he was in that moment. Roderich turned back to the window because he had thought that he had wanted to kiss Gilbert before, but now that he actually had, that want was almost painful and he most certainly should not spend any time looking at Gilbert's mouth.

"I'd take you back to my place, but I share a room with Lud and my dad gets up really early for work…"

Roderich closed his eyes. He knew all this, of course, but it was hard not to think that it sounded like a bunch of excuses. They were excuses, after all. They just happened to be valid ones.

"I know," he said, and it was quiet again. He could hear the crickets outside the car and he took a moment to listen to them sing to each other.

"That was my second kiss." Roderich broke the silence, opening his eyes and turning his gaze back to Gilbert. Gilbert was staring at him, mouth caught half-open. Roderich wasn't sure whether it was due to surprise over the sudden change of topic or if it was because of what he had said. He didn't know if it was worth flattering himself to assume it was the latter.

"Yeah?" It was funny, Roderich thought. Gilbert usually had no problem coming up with things to say. He had told him, once, that he didn't like things being too quiet. That he liked to fill the void up with his own words, bubbling up, ever-flowing. Ludwig was so quiet, he had said, that _someone_ had to do all the talking. Ludwig had been so small and wide-eyed, as a child, lost from losing his mom, from nearly dying. Someone had to make him smile.

In a lot of ways, Roderich sometimes felt a kinship with Ludwig. He may not have seen his mother die, but he knew what it was like to be trapped in yourself. To have the words you needed to say refuse to come. To need someone else to fill the damn void within the world. Within yourself.

"Mhm." He turned to picking at a loose string on the hem of the jacket that Gilbert had wrapped him up in the instant they had gotten into the car. It was funny how sometimes you didn't realize how cold you were until you warmed up. "I didn't have the benefit of having a significant other for a few months. Just one. Once. Kind of. A long time ago."

Gilbert drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The car was still on, primarily for the heater, so it hummed underneath the sound of his fidgeting. "I, well. I had Lizzie, like you know. And a couple things that weren't that serious, then this chick in middle school… And Felicyta surprised me with a kiss once, but it doesn't really count."

"First with a guy?"

Gilbert flushed. If he wasn't so pale, Roderich wouldn't have been able to see it from just the dim porch light. "First real one. Francis and I… We messed around in middle school. Figured it didn't mean anything because Francis messes around with _everyone_."

Roderich didn't know the blond senior all that well, though he knew that he and Gilbert hung out relatively frequently. He could be pushy and abrasive, from Roderich's experiences with him, and co-captained the cheerleading squad while somehow having time to be president of the catering club. One of those people with seemingly endless drive and energy. He also was decently popular despite being openly interested in guys, girls, and everyone in between. Roderich knew that talking to Francis would mean instant rumors so he had always stayed away. Francis had the hots for everyone, like Gilbert had said, so it was safer that way anyway.

"I'm sure Lizzie is a better kisser," Roderich suggested off-handedly.

Gilbert laughed. "Lizzie's an aggressive kisser."

Roderich had to smile at that, because he could picture it. Lizzie did everything aggressively, especially when she was around Gilbert. It was as though they had never gotten past the roughhousing, preschool phase of their relationship. Sometimes Roderich was jealous of their closeness, but it was what had made them bad lovers; they couldn't separate their future from their past.

The light was still on in his father's office. Roderich wondered if he had noticed the car, idling outside so that the boys didn't freeze. He wondered if his father cared. But maybe he hadn't noticed. Maybe he was busy doing what Roderich had been earlier that night: wishing he had the courage to get his wife to come home.

"Do you want to come in?" he asked, turning back to Gilbert. Gilbert looked surprised at the question, so Roderich hastily added, "I don't really want to be alone with him."

Gilbert glanced at the dashboard clock. 11 o'clock. Past curfew. He drummed his fingers one last time on the wheel and Roderich watched his gaze flick back to the lit window. He'd never been in the house when Roderich's father was home.

"Okay." Gilbert took the keys out of the ignition and opened his door. "I'll tell Lud not to wait up."

Roderich wrapped Gilbert's jacket tighter around himself and slipped out of the car. They both headed inside, but on the doorstep, Roderich reached out and caught Gilbert's hand. Gilbert squeezed it. Inside they went, heading up toward Roderich's room.

Outside his father's office, though, Roderich lingered, a heartbeat. The door was closed. He watched the light under the door flicker and thought about his father, diligently typing some opening statements, or perhaps sitting there with his head in his hands. Who was his father: the successful lawyer or the failed husband? And which was it that begged him to forget his son?

Gilbert tugged on his hand and he turned away. They went into the bedroom and shut the door. Roderich leaned against it and closed his eyes, letting out a breath.

"You okay?" Gilbert's voice was soft, practically a whisper, as though he was afraid of being heard from the office.

Roderich opened his eyes and realized that neither of them had turned on the light. Gilbert was a shape in the darkness, visible only by his light hair. He was aware that Gilbert was standing close, that if he reached out he could lay his hand flat on his chest.

"I just think that he should pick one or the other. Being here or not being here." Roderich was always surprised at how emotionless he could make his own voice. The three years of hurt weren't allowed to show. Not even to Gilbert, who knew them better than anyone, who had spent so many evenings here, chasing away the loneliness.

"Is that why you left tonight?"

Roderich hesitated. "No. I was looking for something."

"What?"

"I don't know."

Another moment of quiet. Roderich took a step forward, Gilbert took a step back. Roderich moved around him and over to the bed, sitting down and starting to take off his shoes. He'd forgotten to remove them when he got inside in his haste to avoid his father.

The bed creaked as Gilbert sat down next to him. Roderich reached over to the nightstand and turned on the lamp. Gilbert leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, studying Roderich with seriousness written all over his face.

Roderich didn't know when Gilbert had started being so serious.

"Roderich?"

"Mm?"

"You want me to stay here?"

"Yes."

Gilbert leaned back on his hands, glancing around the room. All the years that he had been coming over, they rarely spent any time in Roderich's room. Roderich hardly spent time in here at all. Three years later, it was still empty of any personality, as though no one lived in it. Roderich viewed it less as his bedroom and more as a transitional space. He had come here. Someday he would leave.

Roderich set the shoes down next to the nightstand and laid sideways across the bed. A moment later, Gilbert joined him. They both stared at the ceiling.

"Ludwig came out to me the other day," Gilbert said, startling Roderich from his study of the shadows above them.

"Oh?" He turned his head to look at Gilbert, who was staring rigidly upward.

"Yeah. Guess it's getting serious between him and this guy online. I mean. As serious as it can be."

Roderich curled his fingers into the quilt. "It's good that he trusted you."

Gilbert turned his head now and their eyes met. He stared, as though trying to communicate something through just his eyes. Roderich took the opportunity to marvel in how red they were, and how red could have so many different shades. "I told him about us," he finally said.

Roderich raised his eyebrows. "And?"

"Hm?"

"What did you tell him?"

"That you're my boyfriend." The words came out in a rush. Roderich turned away, smiling faintly, imaging that same nervous bubble of words coming from Gilbert when he was talking to Ludwig.

"Funny how you told him before you told me."

A sigh came from the other side of the bed and when Roderich peeked back over, Gilbert was smiling again. "Bros before hoes?"

Roderich narrowed his eyes, reaching out to shove Gilbert's chest gently. "You're such a jerk."

"But I'm your jerk."

Curling his fingers into Gilbert's shirt, Roderich considered that. "Guess so."

Gilbert started laughing, so Roderich reached over for a pillow, which he promptly hit against that smug face. "Shush," he hissed. "My dad's home."

Gilbert peeked out from behind the pillow, giving a serious nod and a wink. He was so ridiculous, Roderich couldn't help but smile. "Shut up, now," he muttered. "I'm going to sleep."

He watched Gilbert reach over him and turn off the light. "Night," Gilbert said, his voice formless in the dark.

Roderich took off his glasses and reached out until he was able to set them on the nightstand. "Goodnight."


	19. Chapter 19

Light was peeking in through the blinds. As it was a Saturday, Roderich, briefly awakened by the sun, would normally roll over, pull the blankets further over his head, and go back to sleep. Instead, feeling movement next to him, he opened his eyes and felt around on the nightstand for his glasses. He located them and pressed them onto his face, turning his head.

Gilbert was sitting up. At some point during the night, he had taken off his shirt to sleep more comfortably, Roderich noticed. His skin was so pale that the light lit it up. He hadn't seen that Roderich was awake yet, too focused on scrolling through his phone, one leg folded so that his arm could rest on it. Roderich wasn't sure how long Gilbert had been awake; he was a morning person, which Roderich could not even begin to understand.

Roderich sat up and Gilbert turned to look at him, a little surprised, but smiling. Leaning his head back against the wall, Roderich tried to think of something normal—something not embarrassing—to say to the boy he had just shared a bed with. His bed. Shared his own bed with.

He hadn't yet figured something out when Gilbert said: "Hey."

It was annoying that Gilbert always knew what to say.

"Hi." Roderich stretched out his legs and glanced over at the clock. Just after six. This boy was superhuman. No real person got up before eight on a weekend. "Awake long?"

Gilbert shrugged. "For a bit." He paused, running his phone-less fingers through his hair. Roderich noticed with smug appreciation that Gilbert had a bad case of bedhead: one side of his hair was completely flat. Roderich, to maintain the smugness, decided not to look at himself in the mirror and discover what damage the pillow had done to his own hair.

"I need to be leaving soon, so," Gilbert continued. "My dad always makes breakfast on Saturdays. It's kind of tradition to eat together. It's the one morning he's not out working before now."

"Oh." Roderich turned away. As he did so, he accidentally caught sight of himself in the mirror. His thick hair was a rumpled mess. Great. His clothes were similarly rumpled. His fault for falling asleep in day clothes. He didn't think he had ever done that before. Not when actually in a bed instead of on a couch.

"I'd say you can come but he's probably already started cooking… There's not usually enough for four. I can ask another time, though…"

"Gilbert, you don't have to explain. I don't intend to insert myself into your family tradition." Roderich heard his voice as though from a distance. Family traditions. Had he once had those? Honestly, he wasn't so sure. He could barely remember back to when his mother had still been with them. He didn't remember if, back then, they had been a family. He wasn't so sure they had been.

There was a moment of tense silence, where both felt guilty. Roderich realized, with the weight of it crashing down on him, that things were different now. Their relationship had changed, however subtly, however dramatically. This moment was a make-or-break one.

He turned back to Gilbert with the full-force understanding that, for this to work, he needed to make an effort. "Maybe we can do something this afternoon, after you're done."

Gilbert was smiling, then suddenly his lips were pressed to Roderich's again. It was brief, but after Gilbert pulled back, Roderich was still left stunned.

"Yeah," Gilbert said. "That sounds awesome."

Roderich leaned back against the pillows, his head spinning as he watched Gilbert pull his shirt back on. The room was getting steadily lighter. The sun wasn't fully up yet, but Roderich's room faced east. He hadn't realized just how early it got bright before. He supposed he'd never been awake enough to find out.

Gilbert got to his feet and Roderich mirrored him. Gilbert turned with that wide-mouthed grin. "You gonna walk me out?"

"That's the plan."

They headed for the front door. Once there, Roderich stood awkwardly, watching Gilbert fidget with his pockets. "I'll text you later?" Gilbert finally managed, the corners of his lips curling up.

"Please do."

Gilbert reached out and brushed a strand of hair off Roderich's face. They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Then Gilbert turned and left.

Roderich was standing there, listening to Gilbert's engine start, when he heard footsteps behind him.

"Who was that?" He turned his head to look at his father, who was standing near the staircase with raised eyebrows.

"Gilbert."

"You didn't ask if a friend could stay over."

Roderich felt a rush of annoyance. Really? How dare he pretend to care about rules now. "You're usually not home to ask."

His father seemed annoyed by that comment, which made Roderich's blood boil more. That gave him courage: "Gilbert's my boyfriend. Just thought you should know."

His father looked as though he had been slapped. Roderich watched his eyes wander from Roderich's face to the still-open door behind him. Roderich's heart was racing, but all he could really think was that it wasn't like his father hadn't already _known_. And if he hadn't, how deep into denial had he been?

"I see," his father said, finally. Then, "he looks like a hooligan."

The color rose on Roderich's face; he could feel the flush almost like a burn. He thought back to what Gilbert had been wearing. It hadn't been out of the ordinary for Gilbert: white tee, ripped jeans, Converse, an old leather jacket that his father had passed down to him. A hooligan? Only if teenager and hooligan were automatically synonymous.

But his father just kept talking: "If that is really your relation, I think it is hardly appropriate that you spend overnights. I will also be looking into his family. Really, Roderich, you would think that with the head you have and the grades you get, you would have a little more sense. I expect you to keep this quiet. Heaven only knows what your mother would say…"

Roderich exploded: "It doesn't matter what she would say! She isn't here! She left! And it doesn't matter what _you_ think either! I barely ever see you! You're never home, and when you are, it's never to see me! So it really doesn't _fucking matter_ what you think of _my_ relationship. You don't have any of your own! Not one with your wife, not one with your son! And you know what else? I've had it! If I want to be loudly gay, I'm not letting _anyone_ stop me anymore!"

He caught his breath. He stared at his father's face. His father looked stricken. He realized that he had cursed at his father—at his _father_. It took him a moment to register everything that had come out of his mouth, but when he did, he turned and ran right out that open door, barely catching the "Roderich, wait—" shouted after him.

He started running down the hill, realizing too late that he (once again) was not wearing a jacket—not a smart move in the cold April morning air—and that his face was wet. He single-mindedly headed for Gilbert's apartment, so focused that he almost didn't register the truck pulling up beside him. Gilbert's truck, having not yet made it down the hill, turning around and moving to get him because Gilbert, through some stroke of luck, had been looking in his rearview mirror for a dark-haired, desperate boy running downslope as fast as his legs could take him.

Gilbert reached over and opened the passenger side door. Roderich looked in at him, his vision blurry, his chest heaving from the sprint. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused, horrified. "Your family breakfast…"

"Shit, Roddy, I'll starve and let you eat if it means you won't be crying. Get in."

So Roderich slipped into the truck, staring mournfully downward. Gilbert gently rubbed his arm, then continued driving.

In the background, the radio played some mindless pop song. Roderich closed his eyes and drowned in it.


	20. Chapter 20

Roderich's father wasn't home when he finally went back. This was a bit of a relief. But he didn't ever come home for weeks afterward, as far as Roderich could tell. He wasn't completely sure, though. He spent a lot of time at Gilbert's place.

Gilbert's father was also rarely home, but for very different reasons. He worked himself to the bone doing manual labor to make sure his sons had everything they needed. Roderich saw how Gilbert worried about his father, who was getting older and shouldn't be carrying so much weight at the construction sites. As the summer approached, Gilbert mentioned that he might get a part-time job to help with expenses. His father was vehemently against it.

Roderich understood such pride. But he sat on Gilbert's bed as he filled out applications anyway.

"Does your dad know yet?"

Gilbert paused in the middle of typing. "About us?"

"Mhm."

The typing resumed. "I think he kinda figures."

"And he's okay with it?" Roderich thought back to when his own father found out. He remembered his father looking disgusted. He couldn't recall if there actually had been any disgust, but that was the emotion burned into his mind.

Gilbert shrugged. "Hasn't said anything against it. But Lud and I were talking and realized that our dad and his best friend are like… Suspiciously close."

Roderich smiled, looking down at the bedspread. "Runs in the family."

"I guess."

The harder talk was with Lizzie. Roderich was tuning with her backstage before the spring orchestra concert. Well, Roderich was tuning. He was also becoming increasingly aware of Lizzie staring at him.

"Do you need something, Liz?"

"How long have you and Gilbert been dating?" she asked, in a rush that made it sound more like _howlonghavyounGilbertbindating_?

Roderich looked around quickly, making sure everyone else was focused on their instruments. They all were, except for Ludwig, who was watching them with sudden interest. He turned to Lizzie with a frown. "Keep it down. We're surrounded by gossips."

Lizzie put her hands on her hips as best as she could while holding a viola. "Are you not, then?"

A pause. Roderich carefully put his violin back in its case so he could lean back in the chair without impediment. "No, we are." This was a conversation that he was pretty sure should include Gilbert—and was purposefully organized so that it didn't.

"Then. How. Long?" There was no rush with those words. Just clear hurt at being out of the loop, made angry and staccato.

As if Gilbert and Lizzie had told Roderich when _they_ were dating. As if he hadn't just _stumbled across_ them. This anger seemed unfair.

"Officially? Since March, I suppose." It was early May, but Roderich hadn't spoken to Lizzie too frequently since she had thrown a hissy fit over his final refusal to go to prom. He supposed she must have known something was up when Gilbert also decided to skip the dance.

"Since March?!" Lizzie's voice raised again. "And you didn't tell me?"

Roderich found something interesting on the floor to stare at. "Gilbert isn't ready for anyone to know," he muttered. He hadn't realized until that moment how much that still hurt, despite how understandable it was.

Lizzie's hostility dropped and she put a hand on Roderich's knee. He continued to stare at the floor as she spoke, her voice bleeding concern, worse than the anger. "Oh, Roderich… Do you want me to talk to him?"

"No." Roderich's gaze flicked up to Ludwig, who was now pretending that he wasn't listening. The tenseness in his shoulders gave him away. "I don't want to push him into anything."

He looked back at Lizzie, who appeared as though she were about to argue before their conductor broke in, calling them all to get ready for the stage. Roderich got to his feet, scooping his violin back out of its case. "Please, Liz. Just keep it on the down low."

She pursed her lips and frowned but slowly nodded. "Okay. Just don't let yourself get hurt because Gil's an idiot. A cute idiot. But an idiot."

Roderich gave a helpless shrug. "I don't think it's that serious yet."

From the look Lizzie gave him, Roderich knew that she didn't believe him. Roderich didn't believe himself either. Nothing was ever not serious with Gilbert, even when you told yourself it had to be because Gilbert wasn't ready for the world to know he wasn't straight.

Roderich wasn't ready for the world to know Gilbert wasn't straight either. He wasn't ready for another boy to hate him for ruining his social life.

But Lizzie couldn't understand that. And there was no point in trying to explain. Especially not when he needed his head clear to lead the orchestra.

* * *

As usual, when going out into the lobby after performing, Roderich sat on a cushioned bench while everyone else gushed with their family. He watched Lizzie pose for pictures that her mother wanted, pictures that would look the same as every post-concert picture she had taken during high school, her hair just a little longer, her focus a little surer. Gilbert was laughing as his father put Ludwig through similar treatment.

Back in middle school, Roderich's mother had been the same way. She had come to every single concert, stubbornly dragging her husband along with her, so proud that her son was following in her footsteps.

Would she still want him to be like her now that she had dropped off the map?

Roderich felt eyes on him and looked up to see Gilbert watching. He brushed hair off his face and shook his head: stay with your family right now, I'm alright.

But Gilbert wasn't looking at him anymore. He was staring further down the lobby, brows furrowed. Roderich followed the gaze to a tall, blond man, out of place in a suit that contrasted harshly with the jeans-and-t-shirt crowd that frequented school concerts. He felt, for a moment, as though he couldn't breathe and tried slinking further into the bench so that he wouldn't be noticed.

Too late, though. His father walked over, stiffly, like he did everything else, even breathing.

Roderich forced himself to sit up straight, remembering the lectures he had gotten as a child about slouching and not wanting to recreate them in front of a crowded lobby of people he had to see daily.

His father stood awkwardly in front of him, his hands in his pockets. He wasn't quite looking at Roderich's face—more at a place just above his head. Roderich glanced up to see what might be so interesting. The wall was red, like every other fabric-covered surface in the lobby. He turned his gaze down to his hands, letting the silence stretch on, waiting for his father to break it himself.

"You played well," his father finally said

Roderich resisted the urge to roll his eyes; leave it to a lawyer to state the painfully obvious. "I've been told I tend to."

"I'm sure. You always were your mother's son." That created an awkward pause as both winced. They didn't talk about Roderich's mother. That was the unspoken rule, among plenty of other things they did not talk about because they, frankly, weren't close enough to. Roderich's father cleared his throat and tried again: "You didn't tell me you made first chair."

"I made first chair as a freshman. It's nothing impressive."

Roderich glanced up at his father again, who was standing there, looking a little lost, a little deflated, his mouth partially open. He cleared his throat again. "It's still impressive. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

A surge of anger rose from Roderich's stomach. If he opened his mouth now, he would release a nonstop stream of frustrations, he was sure. So he kept his mouth shut, biting back the three years of being ignored, of asking for his dad to care enough to show up, for begging for one of his parents to actually care. He turned his focus to the side of his father, looking over to where Gilbert was watching them, shoulders tense, ready to come over if necessary.

He closed his eyes and took a breath. "I didn't know you were coming tonight."

"Neither did I. I was in London this time last night. Then I got an email from your, ah… Boyfriend. He had some rather strong words to say."

Roderich's eyes flew open, back to Gilbert, who was too far away to hear anything. He refocused on his father, processing for a moment longer. "He did?"

"Yes. And Roderich… I am glad that I came."

Sensing the hesitation behind the words, Roderich adjusted his glasses and raised his eyebrows. "I suppose you have a flight to catch?"

"I just got the day off," his father said in response. "I do have to get back. But Roderich…" He sighed, putting a hand on Roderich's shoulder. "Tell me when you have a concert, next time. I'll come again."

Roderich stared at him in silence for a long, quiet moment. Then he nodded. "I guess I'll send you an email."

His father's lips curled up, though Roderich hadn't thought it was a joke. "You can call me. I'll be back in a few days."

"Yeah." They stared at each other for a moment longer, then Roderich's father walked away. He was barely out of sight when Gilbert was by his side, plopping down on the bench.

"You emailed my father?" Roderich said, aware of how incredulous his voice sounded.

Gilbert blinked at Roderich, then laughed and leaned his head back. "Yeah. Just wanted to give him a piece of my mind. He didn't even respond, so I figured he'd deleted it. I didn't think he'd _come_ , I just wanted him to get hit by a fucking guilt trip."

Roderich laughed as well, relaxing more into the bench. "Don't do that again."

"Hey. He felt guilty!" Gilbert sounded proud of himself, a grin spreading across his face. "Did he beg for your forgiveness?"

"As close as he gets."

"Do you think he'll come again?"

"God, I hope not."

Gilbert studied Roderich's face, then shook his head. "You don't mean that."

Roderich didn't look back at Gilbert, just stared across the emptying lobby. "No. No, I don't."

"You gonna thank me?"

Roderich looked at Gilbert now, eyebrows raised. "No."

Gilbert's smile got bigger. "Wouldn't expect it anyway."

Getting to his feet, Roderich picked up his violin case and stared down at Gilbert. "Drive me home?"

Gilbert also stood, rolling his eyes. "Only so you don't get lost trying to walk home yourself."

Roderich gently hit Gilbert with the case and headed for the door of the lobby, his mind reeling, half convinced he had dreamed the last half hour. But when they got to the car, which Gilbert had parked obscenely far away, Gilbert's hand slipped into his, squeezing gently.

"You're not upset I emailed him?"

"No. Just surprised you did."

"You underestimate me."

"All the time."

Gilbert laughed again, leaning in and kissing Roderich's forehead. "Cheeky."

"Careful. Lizzie's getting jealous."

Gilbert opened Roderich's car door, shrugging. "She broke up with me, so she can deal."

"Thought it was mutual? Besides, she could be wanting to date me."

"It was. And nah. Everyone wants this guy."

"Mhm." Roderich slipped into the car and leaned his head back. "You keep telling yourself that."

Gilbert's laughter followed them the whole way home.


	21. Chapter 21

Summer was quiet, hazy, and hot. Roderich hated how even the air felt oppressive, that going outside begged the constant feeling of being weighed down. Of struggling to breathe. Of struggling to exist. And sweating. Sweating was horrid enough on its own to be added to any list of unfortunate outcomes of summer.

Roderich hated the current summer for a different reason, though. Instead of two months of unlimited time with Gilbert, learning the edges of their relationship and smoothing them out, the damn boy was working. Excessively. At a coffee shop. Taking orders and cleaning the floors. Not making coffee.

And Roderich?

Roderich spent way too much time at that coffee shop, writing music without his piano to help guide his thoughts. Gilbert guided them instead. He was his compass and a useful excuse to avoid his father, who had suddenly decided to be home. Often.

He didn't get a lot of composing done, though. He was often distracted, watching Gilbert sweep during the slow times, listening to his cheerful voice taking orders. Gilbert was always joking with the customers, guaranteed to put a smile on even the surliest mother-of-five desperate for caffeine. How could he not? Everyone found him adorable.

Roderich had different words for Gilbert.

Despite time to watch and listen to Gilbert, there were some definite problems with sitting in the coffee shop. Like how easy it was to get jealous.

"What's with the long face?" Gilbert had pulled up a chair on his break and was sitting backwards in it, persistent grin plastered on.

"Nothing." Roderich drew in a treble clef, the most he had managed to get done all morning.

Grin faltered. "Seems like something."

Roderich drew a bass clef in the staff below the treble. The dots around the F line came out a little darker than he intended. "She was flirting with you."

Both of Gilbert's eyebrows shot up. "Who?" While he sounded legitimately surprised by this assertion, Roderich didn't see how he could have missed it. There was no way he was that oblivious.

"Triple caramel no whip soy latte." Roderich could still hear her high voice and the slight giggle at the end of her order, almost like the drink was a secret code. He had been concerned enough to look up the drink after she had finished rattling it off. It did not seem to be any kind of code.

Still suspicious.

It took Gilbert a moment. Roderich could see the wheels working in his head. The order had happened quite some time prior, so he tried not to be too frustrated that Gilbert couldn't remember it immediately. He even felt rather smug that Gilbert hadn't found her important enough to remember. Roderich had been concerned, as she had been quite cute. Dark hair in braids, glasses on a freckled nose, sharply dressed.

Roderich knew how Gilbert liked dark haired, glasses-wearing, nicely dressed people.

It finally clicked. "Right! Sophie. She comes in here pretty often. It was a new drink for her and she almost said it wrong. Plus, I was all prepped to write her regular, so she got a little embarrassed…" Gilbert trailed off. Roderich wasn't looking at him, but he could feel the stare, hot on his head. "Roddy, were you jealous?"

"What?" Roderich broke off from tap, tap, tapping his pencil against the paper, trying to come up with the appropriate key signature for this ugly emotion. "No. No, of course not."

He knew he had been. He often felt the desperate claws of worry hooking into his chest. He knew from conversations they had had that most of Gilbert's crushes were on girls. Wouldn't he rather date a girl that looked like Roderich than deal with Roderich and his propensity to get over-attached, his inability to respond to things in a logical way, and his difficulty regulating his own emotions? Wouldn't he rather _anyone_ other than the boy who couldn't ever figure out where he was, who always had to get driven everywhere because he refused to learn how to drive, who had long spells of silence where all he wanted to do was make people hurt, make people feel sorry for him, make people apologize for doing nothing wrong?

If Roderich were Gilbert, he knew that he would want someone better. Especially if Roderich were this Gilbert, the one who still didn't want the world to know that sometimes he liked boys.

But he looked up at Gilbert and just saw amusement. That was somehow worse than what he thought it would be, so he looked down.

The humor was still evident in Gilbert's voice: "Boy, she's a freshman. And I've got you. Anyone else would be a downgrade!"

Roderich found himself smiling, but inside he was feeling sick. Inside, he was thinking: if only he knew.

* * *

If only he knew. If only he knew that suspicion led to jealousy, jealousy lead to overthinking, overthinking led to suspicion and the cycle went on and on and on. And Gilbert, oh Gilbert… He was naturally flirty. His being nice came across as so flirtatious, it caused Roderich to realize both how he had fallen (fallen?) for Gilbert so hard, so fast, he didn't even notice it was happening.

It also showed him just why everyone else loved him. And when the rest of the senior class went into the year thinking Gilbert was single? It was enough to make an apparently-secret boyfriend suspicious. And jealous. And all that came with it.

Felicyta had first period with them. On the first day of school, she had claimed the seat right next to Gilbert before Roderich had even gotten there. He stared at her, the way that she was leaning in toward Gilbert, her chin propped up on her perfectly manicured hand. The way Gilbert was grinning, his sheepish grin.

Gilbert's eyes flicked toward Roderich. Roderich raised his eyebrows.

Gilbert didn't ask Felicyta to scoot over a seat. He just looked vaguely apologetic.

Roderich took a seat on the opposite side of class, slamming his books down.

Lunch was silent on Roderich's part, despite Gilbert's attempts at conversation, but Gilbert was driving him home. Roderich threw his backpack into the backseat and curled up on the passenger side, leaning right, as far away from Gilbert as possible. Staring out the window. He was simmering.

Gilbert was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He waited a second. He sighed. He pinched his nose. "Okay. The fuck is up?"

Roderich stared out the window. "Nothing. I'm ready to go home."

The car didn't start up, so Roderich assumed that Gilbert was ignoring him or something. "Roderich. What. The fuck. Is wrong?"

In his lap, Roderich's fingers laced together, squeezing tight. "Nothing," he repeated. His teeth were clenched.

Another beat of silence. Gilbert turned on the car and threw it into reverse, heading out of the parking lot and off toward their hill. Roderich, if he closed his eyes, could practically feel waves of annoyance hitting him. He tried throwing them right back.

They stopped outside his house. Roderich reached for the door handle.

"Look," Gilbert muttered. "It's not my fucking fault if Felicyta wants to flirt. It's not like I'm flirting back."

Roderich's hand froze, resting on the handle. He still wasn't looking at Gilbert. He hated when Gilbert was angry. It darkened his whole face. "It doesn't matter if you flirt back." His voice was maybe strong enough to carry to the other side of the car. He didn't particularly care if it did or not. "You didn't stop her. So she goes and takes that to all her friends and then it's all around the school and then they're trying to weasel you into taking her to homecoming or whatever."

His brain filled in what his words didn't: And then you realize that it's easier with her and maybe you like her better than me because she's normal and perfect and a girl and I'm that guy with two parents that don't give a shit that you've been carting around since freshman year.

A loud noise from the other side of the car broke his thoughts. Gilbert had hit the steering wheel. Roderich stared over at him now. Not at him. At his hands.

"Why the fuck does that matter? It's not like I'm going to do anything with her! Not my fault if people wanna think what they think!"

Roderich curled his fingers tighter around the door handle. He opened the door. He swung his legs out.

"It matters because it can only happen because you don't want people to know about us."

He grabbed his backpack, shut the door, and headed into his house. It took several minutes before he heard Gilbert's truck pull out of the driveway; Roderich, sitting on the other side of the front door, pressing his fists to his eyes to try and push the stricken look on Gilbert's face out of his head.


	22. Chapter 22

They weren't talking. Roderich had been the one to start the silent treatment. He had come to school the day after the incident in the car and not said a word to Gilbert, hoping that he would end up with an apology and perhaps some plan of how to give them both what they needed moving forward.

He hadn't expected Gilbert to take the damn thing and run with it.

The fight had been on Monday. It was Friday and they hadn't spoken once since then. Lizzie had tried reasoning with both of them, but Gilbert had made it clear that he wasn't going to talk about what happened, not even to her.

Well, if Gilbert wasn't going to, Roderich wouldn't either.

It was the worst first week of school. Roderich was stuck between thinking that he had no one to blame but himself—he had initially instigated the fight, after all—and feeling deep-seated anger toward Gilbert. Was he being unreasonable? Maybe. He couldn't quite decide one way or the other. But Gilbert, he felt, was definitely being unreasonable by insisting on keeping them a secret.

He was collecting his violin from the orchestra room after school when Ludwig stopped him. Ludwig had gotten taller over the summer, somehow, and filled out more, which seemed as if it should be even less possible. Roderich had to tilt his head up to look at him, but he quickly looked away and started to fiddle with his violin case when he saw the frown there.

"Can I help you?" he asked, trying to sound casual. It still came out strained.

"What happened between you and Gilbert?" Ludwig's voice had deepened as well. It surprised Roderich, as Gilbert's voice had stayed stubbornly tenor-leaning through puberty, baritone if Roderich was being generous.

"Nothing. What does Gilbert say happened?" Roderich took the Vienna keychain off one of the case's zipper pulls. He began to put it on a different one.

"Gilbert isn't saying anything. He's just stumbling around gloomily and snapping at anyone who tries to talk to him."

Roderich frowned down at the keychain. Gilbert was moping. He didn't necessarily want Gilbert to mope. He wanted him to fix things.

"He has to be talking to someone." Roderich knew better than anyone that Gilbert was highly social and always jumped at the opportunity to talk. There was nothing that lit up his face more than the realization that someone was interested in what he wanted to say.

"Not that I've seen. He's usually talking to you, though. And if he isn't, he's talking _about_ you. Why isn't he?"

Roderich shrugged. "Guess we aren't feeling it right now."

He kept his gaze firmly on the violin case, trying to avoid the burning stare Ludwig was training on him. He could feel disbelief like knives drilling into his scalp. But, after a moment, he heard Ludwig sigh and walk away, heavy footsteps on tile floor.

Roderich sat back on his heels and stared at the violin case. He sank his teeth into his lower lip and tried to strengthen his resolve. Gilbert had caused this. Not him. It wasn't his fault that Gilbert was ashamed to be with him.

But oh god did it hurt.

* * *

Week two. They still weren't really talking. They'd had a couple conversations but they'd all gone pretty much the same way.

Gilbert: "Do you need a ride?"

Roderich: "No."

Gilbert: "You just gonna walk?"

Roderich: "Yeah."

And Gilbert would shake his head and drive away and Roderich would be stuck wishing he'd said yes to the ride or thinking about showing up at Gilbert's apartment and finding a way to just make things normal again. Wondering if it really was his fault. If he had been too jealous.

But maybe Gilbert just hadn't cared enough.

At the end of week two, Gilbert sat with Felicyta at lunch.

Roderich stared at them, his heart in his throat. Lizzie put her hand on top of his, but she didn't say anything.

Gilbert asked him if he needed a ride home after school. Roderich told him that he should ask Felicyta.

Sometimes words feel like shattering.

* * *

There was a letter in the mailbox when Roderich got home. The envelope was pale purple and the address was written in cursive. Roderich stood there, right on the edge of the street, and stared hard at the handwriting.

His mother had written him.

He went inside and the house was empty. Though his dad was spending more time at home than he had before, Roderich was still left to his own devices the majority of the time. Today, he was grateful for that. He went into the living room and sank down on the couch. He was careful with the envelope, afraid that if he showed that it wanted it too much, it would vanish.

It was a postcard from Salzburg, the Mirabell Palace shining on the cardstock. There was nothing else in the envelope. Roderich's heart initially sunk; he had been hoping for a longer letter when his mother finally decided to talk to him. But he took a breath and focused on the positives: she had written him and he now knew she was in Salzburg. Or, at least, had been in Salzburg recently.

Kind of weird that she had put a postcard in an envelope. She had written all the way across the back instead of writing the address there. His mother had always liked doing things that people didn't expect. Like leaving.

He took a deep breath. And he read the note.

 _Dear Roderich,_

 _I'm sorry I haven't been around the past few years. Someday, I will explain, but it isn't right to do so in a letter. I know you have no reason to believe this promise, but I do promise to tell you what happened. I want you to know that I miss you and I think about you every day. I hope that high school is going well and I'm sorry to be missing it. I know that you are out there doing amazing things. I'll know all about them eventually._

 _I hope, too, that your father is showing you that he can, in fact, be a father. He loves you more than anything. Someday you'll believe that._

 _I've been traveling and working on my music, though I'm sure you're better than I am now. You were always meant to be brilliant. I know that you are._

 _I love you, Roderich. I hope you can forgive me. And I'm sorry for not reaching out sooner. I wish I could take credit for writing now, but I'm afraid I'll have to give that to your boyfriend. He seems like a nice boy. I'd love to know the story from you._

 _Love,_

 _Mom_

Roderich stared for a moment in shocked silence at the letter. Then, tucking it into his pocket, he grabbed his keys and headed out of the house, back down the hill.


	23. Chapter 23

The door was unlocked when Roderich got to Gilbert's apartment, which meant that Gilbert had been the one to close it, not Ludwig. Roderich was in the habit of just opening the door but he hesitated outside, the doorknob turned in his hand, unsure if he was still welcome.

Roderich was not, however, in the habit of backing down, even when it was stupid not to, so he pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Ludwig, who was sitting on the couch and playing some video game that Roderich didn't recognize barely glanced up. "He's in the bedroom," was his only acknowledgment. After the awkward conversation in the orchestra room, Roderich was grateful for the apparent nonchalance and just moved on.

He found Gilbert sprawled across his bed, scrolling through his phone. Gilbert also barely glanced up when Roderich stepped into the room. This time, though, Roderich wasn't grateful. His stomach felt as though someone was squeezing it. He put his hands in his pockets to keep them still.

"What?" Gilbert asked. It must have come out harsher than he had intended because he winced after saying it.

Roderich stepped into the room and nudged the door closed with his foot. He sat down on Gilbert's desk chair, which was a little off-kilter, but still stable, and stared at the ground. "I got a letter. From my mom."

For a moment, there was silence, then Gilbert sat up, swinging his legs over the end of the bed and scooting closer. The desk was so close to the bed that their knees almost touched. Roderich tried not to breathe too hard.

"You did? What'd she say?" Gilbert's voice was no longer harsh, but warm with his regular excitement. Roderich still couldn't look at him, though now he was staring at Gilbert's knees.

"Not much." Roderich closed his eyes, struggling with the feeling that his mother really hadn't said anything important. "Nothing that she shouldn't have said four years ago. Except…" He looked up at Gilbert and was shocked by the brightness of his eyes. Somehow he had the feeling that had been gone recently. "Except she said that you seem like a nice person. She didn't seem too bothered by… This."

Gilbert wrinkled up his nose and leaned back on his hands. For a moment, the word "this" hung between them, filling the space they had created there. Then Gilbert shifted forward, reaching out and putting a hand on Roderich's knee.

"I miss you, Roddy," he said and, if Roderich had been in the mood, he would have told him that he was ridiculously off topic. Except he wasn't, really.

While he wasn't in the mood for being sarcastic, Roderich still had some hurt, pressing against the back of his throat, the backs of his eyes. He shifted his knee under Gilbert's hand, though he didn't pull away. "You seem to have found people to keep you company."

Gilbert moved his hand, frowning now. "Roderich, there really is _nothing_ happening between me and Felicyta. You know that. We've been friends since elementary school and we're working on a project together. That's it."

" _I_ know there's nothing going on. That's not the point. I've told you." Roderich surprised even himself with how blank his voice sounded. He was turned across the room toward Ludwig's side now. Always orderly. Not so painfully _Gilbert_. "Other people think there's something going on."

"I don't get why that bothers you so much. We know the truth. That should be what matters."

Roderich forced himself to look back at Gilbert. There was something desperate in Gilbert's face. Shaking his head, Roderich got to his feet. "It should be. But it isn't. Because everyone in my life has either not wanted me or been ashamed to want me. And I thought that maybe you'd be different."

He delivered the statement so calmly, with no real emotion in his voice, but it still struck home. The shock splintered across Gilbert's face as though he were glass. And he didn't try to stop Roderich as he turned and left.

"Is it all fixed now?" Ludwig asked as Roderich went through the living room, still not looking up from his video game.

Roderich didn't answer, too busy getting out the door as quickly as possible, the tears that had thankfully stayed stuck in his head when he was talking to Gilbert now spilling free and fast down his face.

* * *

Tired of being alone, that night Roderich invited Lizzie over for Thai food. It was somewhat bittersweet, as Thai takeout was usually his and Gilbert's thing, but you just couldn't deny a craving. They sat at the kitchen table instead of on the living room floor and ate curry while talking about nothing important: math class, the freshmen in orchestra, the popular-crowd couples who had definitely broken up over summer, and celebrity crushes.

They did not talk about Gilbert.

Since it was Friday, Lizzie didn't leave immediately after they ate. Instead, they both curled up on the couch, under blankets, and turned on trash reality TV. Roderich thought that Lizzie was worried about whether he would be okay if she left; while they hadn't talked about what happened with Gilbert, she had undoubtedly texted with him. She had to have from the way she kept glancing over at him.

Lizzie nudged him with her toe. "You sure your dad won't be home tonight?"

Roderich wrinkled up his nose. "He might be home more now, but he's barely ever here during the week. If he shows up, I'll be shocked."

Leaning her head back, Lizzie tugged the blankets more around her neck. "My mom's busy too, but at least she's home every night."

"If I said that to my father he'd just remind me that his very important job sends him out of the country."

"Right."

Roderich could feel Lizzie's gaze on him, worried little knives hyper-focused on his face. He sighed and looked down at his feet, covered currently by plaid fleece. "Your mom and Gilbert's dad are busy all the time and work really hard. I get that. But both of you know that your parents care about you. My dad is never home. He doesn't even know who I am and what I like when he is here. My mom left. My parents don't _want me_."

Lizzie didn't say anything to that and Roderich figured she just didn't know what to say. How did one respond to that? But the silence stretched on a little too long to be comfortable and Roderich had to fill it. Couldn't just leave off with that bombshell.

"And I know it's hard for Gilbert and maybe he's not ready to be out and I get that. But no one ever gave _me_ a choice. I couldn't… I couldn't hide this. He can. But when he does, it feels like he's hiding _me_. And if he's hiding me, then, well… It feels like he doesn't want me either."

He felt Lizzie's hand come to rest on his shoulder. He let his head fall to his own. "I know. That's selfish."

After another moment of silence, Lizzie finally spoke, her voice hesitant. "Maybe. But you've spent so long being ignored that maybe right now you have to be a little selfish."

When he didn't respond, Lizzie stood up and went into the kitchen. Roderich stared blankly at the television until she appeared again with two bowls of ice cream. Coffee ice cream with caramel drizzle. The only kind he ever had in the freezer, as it was his favorite.

They didn't talk again, busy just sitting there and eating ice cream, continuously letting another episode start anytime one ended. At some point, Roderich started to doze, somewhere between asleep and awake.

Lizzie shook him awake around midnight. "Roderich," she hissed. "Roderich, look at this."

Pushing up his glasses and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Roderich blearily took the phone being pressed into his hand. It took a bit for his eyes to focus on the screen, which seemed to be ridiculously bright, but he finally could make out Lizzie's Instagram feed. She had stopped on a post of Gilbert's.

It was a picture from the summer, Roderich and Gilbert sitting together on Gilbert's bed. Roderich wasn't looking at the camera, but down at his own phone, and Gilbert had clearly snuck the photo, sitting there with a goofy grin and a peace sign.

The post was captioned: I have the cutest bf ever #imbibitches.

It took Roderich a few tries to process the words, sure that his eyes were playing a trick on him. Then the phone fell out of his grip and onto his lap as he stared over at Lizzie in shock, her face mirroring his.


End file.
